Girl Trip, Day 1

Sarah and I got to take a little Girl Trip this year, and we had a blast! On the first day, we started out by going to Thanksgiving Point. We saw the Art Shop, where they do blown and stained glass. It was so beautiful. I would have loved to let both of us do a flower, but it was $25 to make one flower. Maybe we'll do that another time. Sarah is really into art, so I know she would enjoy that. Then we toured the shops there. We saw some very fancy stuff, and some very fancy prices. They had some nice things, but I am just not into that style of decorating. My favorite place was the little children's boutique by the candy counter. They had some really cute baby gifts and toys.

Then we headed to West Valley to check into our hotel. I used Yahoo Maps, and this time it got me right where I wanted to go. However, I didn't do my homework thoroughly enough when I booked the hotel.

First of all, it smelled bad. That was the worst. The elevator and the staircase both smelled like cigarette smoke. Not cool. Then we didn't get a free breakfast. They had a little kitchenette in the room with a fridge, a range, and a microwave. I guess that would be cool if we were staying a week or so, but since we weren't, we had to get breakfast somewhere else. And then, they didn't have a pool. That was a real bummer, since we had worked hard to find Sarah a new suit before our trip. And the cable only had a handful of channels, all of them talking about Michael Jackson. The bed was hard and the pillows were soft. At least it was clean, which is about all I can say.

But hey, we were planning on doing a lot more than hanging around our room! After a trip to buy the stuff for breakfast, we went to Cracker Barrel. Sarah HATES their food, but we were just going to buy candy sticks. I got a pecan roll, which lasted mere minutes! And then it was time to find a place for dinner.

We had decided before we left on Chinese food, and the Kowloon Cafe was right by our hotel. We got egg rolls (which Sarah loved), ham fried rice (which I loved), orange chicken, and sweet and sour chicken (which we both loved). We had just enough time to read our fortunes before we had to leave for our show.


We were going to the Hale Center Theater to see Hello Dolly! As you can see, the theater there is LOTS fancier than the one in Orem. I snapped this picture before dinner to make sure I got pictures before it got dark.





Here's a closeup of the stained glass window.



The theater was very fancy inside too. Our seats were pretty good. But the play - wow, was it well done! The costumes were great, the set was very nice, the choreography was amazing, but the singing - just incredible! I was so impressed with sound of even the singers in the chorus. It was really, really good.

The story is about Dolly Levi, a matchmaker who has been called in to help a rich man find a wife. She decides to marry him herself, but first she has to match up his daughter and his clerks. There were some really fun roles in this, and everyone seemed to be having a great time.

My only (minor) complaint is that we missed The Importance of Being Earnest, which they did earlier this season, and The Scarlet Pimpernel, which is the next play. We did catch a glimpse of them rehearsing one of the numbers. I would love to go back and see another production there.

After the play, we went back to our hotel, ate junk food, and watched Evan Almighty. Even with the hard bed, I fell right asleep, with the songs from the play running through my head.