Travels: Denver

Jun and I are currently in Denver, as she had a work-related conference/class to attend. With my current joblessness, I am tagging along with her and enjoying the benefits her company has given her which include a free hotel room, free rental car (Dodge Caliber, which has to be one of the slowest, least-powerful vehicles I've ever driven) and enough per-diem money to feed both of us every day.

In the past when I've gone on trips like these with Jun, I've been able to go out during the day and walk around downtown and enjoy the things the city has to offer. This time is a little different because our hotel is about 10ish miles southeast of downtown. Parking downtown is ridiculous (in the neighborhood of $10/hour) so on Monday I decided to take the light rail. The nearest station to our hotel is about a mile away, so I got up in the morning and made the hike to the station and caught the train. It took a good hour of walking and train-ing to get downtown and when I got there, I roamed around for awhile and took some pictures and acted all tourist-y. It was a beautiful day in the low 90s with the sun shining and I enjoyed the day but by about 3 o'clock in the afternoon I felt like I had seen all I needed to see and caught the train back home.

I've spent the last day and a half lounging around our room reading my book or exploring the hallways and stairwells of the hotel...

Other than that we have been trying to eat in all the Denver restaurants that have been featured on food-related TV shows. So far we have been to:

The Cherry Cricket - As seen on Man Vs. Food
The Bagel Deli - As seen on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives

and

Beau Jo's Pizza - As seen on Man Vs. Food

We might try to hit another place or two before we leave on Friday.

Also, last night we decided to take our extremely-underpowered car and drive into the mountains west of Denver. We drove along the winding mountain roads (avoiding the hundreds of bicyclists) and stopped at most scenic lookouts to take pictures. Along the way we also found the place where Buffalo bill was buried. Who knew he was buried on top of a Colorado mountain? I sure didn't. We were also planning on driving up the the famous (?) Red Rock Amphithéâtre (not trying to be snobby with my spelling, that is what the spell-check suggested as the preferred spelling) to check it out, but there happened to be a Death Cab for Cutie concert that night and the place was packed so we headed home. We might try again tonight since there are no scheduled events.

I forgot to upload the pictures from our scenic drive to the computer before making this blog post, so if you read this before I edit and add the pictures... I'll get to it!

Edit: Here's a couple of pictures.