Jackieinpdx's Blog

It is such a different experience. Thankfully I only travel there a few times a year for work. Utah is an interesting state. The LDS church dominates the state liquor commission. In order to drink alcoholic beverages in a bar you have to buy a membership. If you are staying at the hotel where the bar is you do not have to pay the $25 membership fee but you do have to fill out the membership card. Their laws are interesting to say the least. A shot is not a real shot. It is only 1 ounce. You can order a double but the 2nd shot comes in a shot glass on the the side and you have to pour it yourself. If you order a pitcher of beer there must be a minimum of three people at the table. If one of the three goes to the restroom a waiter must remove the pitcher of beer from the table until the third person returns. Last night I had dinner at the hotel where I was staying. I talked to the waiter about the ridiculous price of their glasses of wine. I paid $9.61 for a glass of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay the night before. That is more than $1.61 that I would pay at a high end restaurant/bar in Portland. The waiter told me that the mark up in Utah is extremely high on wine and liquor. Yes, I figured that out!
I had a conversation once with a fellow travel in the airport who said “when you read about the president on the front page of the SLC paper it is the only paper that is referring to the president of “the church”.

Then to top this off is the fact that it only takes one day for my Portland body to get totally dried out by the dry climate in SLC. It drives my sinuses crazy and by the 2nd day I have nose bleeds and am either blowing my nose or sniffing Vicks.

I do not plan on returning to SLC for a few months which should be plenty of time for me to recover from the last three days.

Filed under: "work related", Travel | Tagged: "alcohol laws", "Salt Lake City" | 1 Comment »