Settling In

I spent Feb. 7 just settling in to our new home in Salt Lake City.

The Parc is a 12 story condominium, and part of The Gateway, a shopping, dining, and entertainment complex on the eastern edge of downtown.

Our condo, 609, is in the center barely visible above the stores.

We often enter from this, the east side and go through a back corridor behind the stores to reach our building.




Otherwise if we are biking we go through the front entance on the west side and through the main lobby.

The garage door is to the right of the main entrance and our space is on P1, one floor below first.

This is a view from a balcony on the second floor.

We usually go straight through the lobby to the elevators and on up to the 6th floor.

Our building is very secure- you need a card to enter any of the exterior doors and to make the elevator go anywhere other than floor 1.

Most of the hallways in the Parc are identical. This is a view of our door. We go past one unit before reaching ours when we head N down our hallway. (Sorry I don't know how to rotate the picture!)

When you enter our place, you enter the great room which includes a small entry and closet, a kitchen with bar separating it from the dining/living room.

The kitchen has stainless steel appliances including a gas stove with a convection oven.

The living room has the corner wrap-around pull-out couch and TV stand.

The dining room has a table and 4 chairs.

Across from the wrap-around couch is a door to a balcony.

From this balcony we have a great view of the Parc's courtyard, off the fifth floor, the clock tower, stores on the north-east side, the old Union Pacific Depot, Energy Solutions Arena where the Utah Jazz play, and even the skyline of Temple Square.

Our unit is a one bedroom and so to the northside of the greatroom is a short hall connecting the bedroom and bath with a linen closet in between. Our bedroom has a bay window where we store our bicycles (as our unit does not have a storage unit). You can barely see my front wheel. We also store our camping equipment still in boxes on the south wall of this room.

The bathroom has a separate shower and tub as well as a giant mirror and long counter. You can see the shower door in the mirror. It has the red towels hanging on it. After a long day of exploring the town, I sometimes take a nice soak in the tub on the far right. It doesn't have jets, but it has armrests so I can relax and read a book (if I am very careful not to get it wet!)

On Thursday, February 7th, once our things were settled into the condo, I enjoyed exploring the rest of the Gateway, taking the elevator to level 5 and exiting our building onto the courtard, down the stairs and out a door onto the upper level of the shopping mall.

In our first month in Salt Lake City, we have eaten at 5 of the restaurants in the Gateway (and also gotten take out at 2 of the cafes in the Canyon Creek food court.)

We saw Juno at the Megaplex theaters and 2 IMAX movies; The Body and Deep Sea 3D at the Clark Planetarium, (where we also enjoyed the exhibits. )

It is easy to see that we have really enjoyed living in and exploring our Gateway complex.