Salt Lake City

I arrived into Salt Lake City at 12.30 and caught the bus into town. The bus driver said that I should get off at the terminal and then catch another bus to my hostel. I got off at the terminal but it was deserted except for a few homeless people. In this I might be presuming too much, but they had carts with all their stuff and smelled homeless, plus there was nothing going on at the bus terminal. I checked the map in my guide book and decided that I could walk to the hostel. When I got to the hostel my heart sank a little, but it's not like I really had a choice about where to stay. This hostel was one of the ones closest to the city centre and in my price range. I went on in, past the group of people sitting and smoking outside. The inside didn't change my opinion, I think this place is some where where people stay when they are one step away from being homeless. This doesn't make them not nice people, but does make this not your typical youth hostel. At least the hostel was quiet and I managed to get a two bed room to myself. I tossed the rucksack on the bed and went off into town. The hostel is beside a train track and I took a train photo for Scott!!
I went to Temple Square, home of the Church of Latter Day Saints, it covers two city blocks and that doesn't include various other buildings to do with the church. I went in through the gate and was immediately set upon, in a nice way, by two female missionaries. Since I had been forewarned that this would happen I wasn't too concerned. They offered to give me the tour, I accepted. We discussed the church, the buildings etc. and although I tried to resist the chance of explaining that my definition of historic in terms of age, was different to theirs, I couldn't. We went into the assembly hall, which was cool. The builders used a lot of wood in the interior construction but painted it to look like stone and marble, they did a good job. They used white pine for the pews and painted them to look like oak, another good job. Next it was into the Tabernacle hall, this is where the Tabernacle choir sings every Sunday. This is where I would come to hear them, Betsy had told me that they were one of the best choirs in the world and if I had the chance to hear them sing, then I definitely should. Non - Mormons cannot enter into the Mormon temple, even if your child is getting married there, you have to wait outside. From the outside it reassembles a large cathedral and you would expect it to have a high interior vaulted ceiling, it's not the case. The temple is less a church for services than a school. It has several floors and rooms for classes, meetings and prayer services. The two girls left me at the visitor centre and asked me to complete a questionnaire on their "services" this questionnaire also has a space for you to give a friends contact details, if you think that they would like to be sent some info on the Church. I was so tempted to write down Darren's name, but thought he would kill me if I did and I couldn't think of anyone else who would appreciate the joke. I stopped in a bar and had a beer by myself, but felt it was a bit sad to drink by myself.I headed back to the hostel and slunk back into my room, it had it's own t.v. and I settled down to a night of traditional entertainment.
I only planned to stay one night in the hostel as finally I had had a positive response to one of my couchsurfing emails. I packed up my stuff and left my bag in the hostel office. Whatever else I may say about this hostel, the manager, Ronnie, was a nice, genuine guy. I headed into town, stopping off at the visitor information centre and then onto the public library. The library is in another cool building and I spent a bit of time there. I headed up the only hill in Salt Lake to the Capital building, (I refuse to spell capital with an "o"). The building was open and I took a look. It is another beautiful building, very classical. I headed back down to Temple Square and took a tour of Brigham Young's house. Brigham Young was the second prophet of Mormon, after the original leader, Joseph Smith. Young is the man who brought the Mormons from Mississippi to Utah. At the time Utah was not a part of the U.S. and he thought that he could carve his own nation. Unfortunately for him the U.S. stopped fighting with Mexico and Utah was handed to the U.S. as part of the peace settlement. The house is fairly well preserved and here is the only time the missionaries will mention the practice of polygamy. It's not like they could really miss it out because the house only housed one of Young's wives, it's thought that he may have had up to ten. No one's really sure of the final tally! After I was finished with the Mormons for another day I wandered down to the shopping centre, browsed in the book store and hung out until Sam, my couchsurfing host came and picked me up.
Sam is a cool guy, he is still at university, he is studying to be an elementary school teacher. We went to his apartment and he got me set up. He took me to his favourite place for Mexican food, it's more like a shop than a restaurant. The food is really good and to top it off they have excellent ice cream. This is one of the reasons why I like couchsurfing so much, you get to go to local places that you would never find as an ordinary tourist because they don't appear in any guide book. We went back to the apartment and chilled for a while and then went to a local bar for a beer. The beer was good and just what I needed to end the day. We took a slow walk back to the apartment and sleep.