View From Our Balconey

We arrived on Thursday, December 14. We checked into our room and then headed down to the Deercrest Club for a wine tasting with the hotel’s wine ambassador, Ursula. We drank Schramsberg champagne (great Napa Valley Wine) to start and followed it up with some interesting other wines. My favorite was a cab by Heron, a small vineyard in Napa run by a well respected female winemaker. While she is known for her Merlot, the cab was great.

Friday we headed into Park City for lunch and shopping. Had a nice lunch at 501 Main. We then went on a leisurely shopping and gallery hoping tour. Some of the art galleries are great with some terrific art by local artists. Park City is a very artsy place and while these pieces would not look good in Connecticut, they seem to fit in great out here.

After a nap and a cocktail outside by a large fire pit, we headed back to town for dinner at Tupelo, our favorite restaurant. We had a nice visit with chef Matt Harris and the rest of the staff. Matt has added an “Annex” to the regular menu which contain specially dry aged meats that he has been working with a local farmer to create. We split a 28 oz. Buffalo Prime Rib that was out of this world, melt in your mouth, good. We conferred with the resident wine expert, Sean, and tried a bottle of Tarima, a Spanish wine made using the Monastrell grape. It was a powerful, spicy wine and matched perfectly with the meat. The best part about it was that it was priced under $25.00. Sean is the best at finding great wines at great prices.

Buffalo Prime Rib

We finished the day by watching a Hallmark holiday movie but we were both asleep in 15 minutes. It’s ok, we know how all those movies end anyhow.

View from Deercrest Cabin

In the afternoon, we headed down to Salt Lake City to do some shopping, \240have dinner and see the lights at Temple Square. Temple Square is where the Temple of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) is located. The Temple, along with some other church buildings, occupy a 34 acre site in the middle of Salt Lake City. The lights were spectacular along with several nativity scenes and other sculpture.

Temple Square

Mormon Temple

We had dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant called Cafe Molise.

We were back to the hotel by 8:00 pm and decided to watch a Hallmark holiday movie. Of course, we both fell asleep with about 15 minutes left in the movie so we missed the ending. It’s ok, we all know they lived happily ever after.

View down to St. Regis

After skiing, we hung out and relaxed. I watched my Eagles win and Patti actually finished watching an entire Hallmark Christmas movie. We went down to the Deercrest Club later in the afternoon to catch up with one of our favorite people, Teri Orr, who runs the Park City Institute and is very involved in Sundance. We like Teri mostly because she is an interesting person and partly because she gets us special reserve seating at Sundance films.

We headed out to dinner at Maripossa which is at the Starlight Lodge, way up on Deer Valley Mountain. It is a very rustic place and we had a nice table and good service. We started with a glass of champagne and then feasted on Lobster Chowder, a Tomato Torte with Burrata, Gnocchi with lemon Guerrero blanc (with shaved truffles), Guinea fowl, Scallops with corn risotto and a special “Snowball” dessert (bittersweet chocolate covered in a vanilla cream with chocolate skis). \240

In between courses, the chef served little surprises. The first was a little vanilla chocolate shell stuffed with tuna tartare/wasabi/soy sauce (weird but good) that Patti wanted no part of. The second was A chai toasted marshmallow served after the meal (a very fancy take on a classic).

Vanilla truffle with Tuna tartare

Snowman dessert

We headed back to the St. Regis to pack, drink milk, eggnog and orange juice (needed to clean out the fridge), and head to bed. We will be heading back home tomorrow refreshed and ready to enjoy Christmas with our family.