Valentines Is For Lovers - 2024

This year we celebrated Valentine's Day a few days early with a getaway to downtown Salt Lake City. A couple of years back Alison told me she wanted to see Swan Lake. Ever since then, I have been keeping an eye on the Ballet West schedule. They were performing Swan Lake this year, and the timing coincided with Valentine's Day. I booked a hotel room for Saturday night and bought tickets. It was a recipe for a fabulous weekend getaway. 

We headed downtown in the early afternoon. We took Trax. One thing we love about living in Daybreak is that we are close enough to walk to the train station. We made it downtown and dropped our bags at the Hotel Monaco. This has been our go-to hotel in Salt Lake and it is right across the street from the Capitol Theater, which made it the ideal location for this trip. 

We grabbed a quick dinner at the Coffee Shop at the Little America. This has long been one of our favorite places to eat downtown and it had been a while since our last visit, but it did not disappoint. They always have great food. 

A fun fact we learned is that Taylor Swift rented the Swan Lake costumes from Ballet West to film the "Shake it Off" music video.  

After dinner, we headed to the show. It was fantastic. I didn't really know what to expect as my only other real ballet experience was with the Nutcracker. This is a much more complex and involved show. It runs for about 3 hours with 2 intermissions. The dancing was superb with so much grace and elegance on stage. The music is phenomenal. It clearly sounds like Tchaikovsky and Alison pointed out to me you could hear echoes of some of the Nutcracker scores in places. My favorite part was Act II. The music and the dancing here were really incredible, particularly when Siegfried and Odette fell in love. The villain Rothbardt was another standout, both his costume and his demeanor made it clear he was a bad guy. The start of Act IV was also pretty incredible - the stage was covered with mist and the swans slowly materialized out of the mist. That was amazing. We both loved the show. There is a reason it is considered the quintessential ballet. 

On Sunday we grabbed brunch at Market Street. This has become maybe our favorite breakfast place downtown. The food is always phenomenal and with brunch, they serve a mini cinnamon roll which is the stuff dreams are made of. After we called it a weekend and headed home. On our way, we talked about how much we have enjoyed these local getaways. They are a really enjoyable way to celebrate a special occasion.