Since moving to Park City, I suddenly find that I am extremely popular with my out-of-town friends.  This could be due to my outgoing personality or wonderful hospitality but it’s doubtful.  The real reason for the sudden surge in attention is my location—Park City, my home, is the host city of the Sundance Film Festival.  I don’t take this personally instead I simply roll with it and enjoy having so many visitors.  My husband and I are never lonely.

First dibs for the opening weekend of Sundance went to my LA girlfriends.  I think I enjoyed showing them around town even more than they enjoyed their first Sundance Film Festival and first time setting foot in the State of Utah.  Experiencing Sundance thorough their eyes made my own experience so much more fun especially since we started off our experience riding the city buses to Main Street and the High West Distillery for whiskey tasting.

Here are some highlights of my LA girls Sundance experience:

Seeing ice fisherman on drive to Sundance Resort –Our official Sundance experience started on Friday.  With some local’s tickets in our hands, we drove through Heber City and over to the Sundance Resort to view our first film. This gave the girls a chance to see Utah’s beauty but also to observe a sport they don’t have in Southern California – ice fishing.  The girls who had totally stressed over what clothes to bring since it was 10 degrees at night were shocked to see people voluntarily sitting on a frozen lake on a folding chair fishing.

First film –loved it.  We saw a film titled, “The Machine That Makes Things Disappear.”  The film was about hopes and dreams of young people in Georgia (not the state but the country).  The film was fascinating and haunting so we talked about it over a wonderful lunch at Sundance for hours afterwards and all agreed we’d like to see it again. They loved it!

Second film – not so much.  We won’t name names but our second film was a head scratcher for all of us.  We all were wondering how it passed the jury to be entered into the film festival.  Part of being a film buff at Sundance is to expect the unexpected and enjoy the experience regardless if the film suits your particular taste.

Main Street. We hit all the sponsor venues we could: the HP technology and the lounge for drinks and music. The L’orel make-up bar and Adobe card making station. We were very impressed with the music cafe and became instant fans of an incredible singer, Kat Edmonson and chatted it up with her afterwards.  The LA girls spotted Josh Radnor also listening so we talked with him for a minute and he was kind enough to snap some photos with my friends.   We met the adorable Stella Artois girls handing out special glasses and gifts.

Riding the special event buses – the event buses are part of the Sundance experience because you definitely don’t want to try to park anywhere near Main St.  So those — well most– who ride the bus are in a great mood and super friendly.  We met all kinds of people in-between venues including film festival groupies from all over the world and a screen writer and his entourage from my girlfriend’s backyard in LA.

We now have some new friends and some great experiences from the Sundance Film Festival.  The girls have already put in a “reservation” to stay with us next year.