My favorite places:
Red Butte Garden. Up on the east bench with an incredible view of the valley and a beautiful stream, orangerie, trails and gardens.
Natural History Museum. Probably a surprise to see this, but the architecture is stunning; it is right next door to Red Butte Garden, and the exhibits are fascinating.
Main Street downtown has a lot of restaurants and bars (though we just lost 3 to a massive fire), historic buildings, and City Creek Mall which has the same stores you’ll find in every city’s malls, but is still worth the stroll with it’s creek that runs through it, closeable roof in cold or wet weather, and upscale shops.
Utah State Capitol is right up the hill and is work a walk-through.
A ‘gay tour’
Gilgal Garden. A very short stop of a garden created by a crazy mason that was saved from destruction by the City. It was a monument by a Mormon bricklayer that has, among other things, a Brigham Young Sphinx. It’s hard to describe, but it is a ‘first date’ location for me.
Trolley Square. It was where the gajillion street cars were housed and is now a trendy local-only indoor shopping center. There is Spark, a great gay-owned male clothing shop that has underwear, swimwear, shoes, clothing, and … poppers. Also gay card and gift shop Cabin Fever, and a beautiful gay-owned stationery store called Tabula Rasa.
Then on to the gay 9th & 9th neighborhood on Harvey Milk Boulevard, for card, gift, and adult shop Cahoots, with a gay-owned coffee shop, Coffee Garden, next door. The neighborhood has smaller local-only restaurants and a small mixed-crowd pub and restaurant with outdoor seating – East Liberty Tap House.
Down Harvey Milk Blvd are a number of other gay-owned restaurants, as well as Milk+ Dance Club, and my favorite Club Try-Angles.
Hikes
City Creek Canyon: My favorite low-key hike starts at the Utah State Capitol, heads down to Memory Grove, then up City Creek as far as you want to go.
A short one-mile round-trip hike that rewards with a 270-degree view of the entire Wasatch Front is Ensign Peak Trail.
Living Room Lookout Trail is about 2.5 miles with another spectacular view of the valley from a rock formation that resembles sofas and chairs in a living room.
Cecret Lake Trail is a beautiful, cool, 90-minute hike to a small alpine lake in the Albion Basin of Little Cottonwood Canyon near Alta Ski Area. You have the option to continue hiking up from this trail to Sugarloaf Peak.
Also:
Some people like the bus tours, which will go through many areas of the central city, and the Great Salt Lake. I can wrangle their info if that is a direction you want to go.
You can also drive to the Great Salt Lake. It’s about a half hour to Saltair, a concert venue that you can get to the lake. Driving another 15 minutes or so you can go to our Nude “Beach” – not really a beach (hence the quote marks) anymore with the lake receding as far as it has, but people still go hang out there au naturel.
Food
My favorite more upscale restaurant is Caffe Molise (northen Italian cuisine) and their wine bar downstairs, BTG (By The Glass). Mexican restaurants, Red Iguana (best mole) and Rio Grande Cafe (best everything else, and in a restored firehouse). Neighborhood restaurants are all walkable, including $14 steak dinner on Friday nights at Handlebar 145 steps from the house. There are also several new Asian restaurants within a few blocks — TukTuk Thai, Shinobi Sushi and Japanese, and Uncle’os Hot Pots Korean.