Denver

Hi Everyone! 

A while back I promised you a post about our Denver trip from late June....it's finally ready! I took about a zillion pictures and tried to condense it down, but it's still pretty long.

First thing's first...the airport.  It's located about 20-30 mins outside of Denver.  The terminals are small, and are connected to the main area via a train.  The train gets pretty packed but it's nice and super fast.  

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If you rent a car, like I did, there are shuttles constantly stopping by to pick you and your luggage up. All of the drivers we encountered were super sweet and carried our luggage for us.  

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The drive toward downtown Denver isn't bad despite the road construction near the airport.  

We spent a lot of our time walking around downtown Denver.  It's a good idea to park and sight see.  If you have a small child, a stroller is a must!

Downtown you'll see the state capitol (which is currently under construction) and City Hall:

One trip that is worth making while you're downtown is the 16th Street Mall, which is basically a bunch of great stores lining both sides of downtown's 16th street.  They have H&M, Gap, Loft, TJ Maxx, etc...and a whole bunch of bars and restaurants.   

Here we are posing outside one of the hotels on 16th Street (mom is taking the picture).

Here's Eva getting down to the music inside H&M :)

The mall provides free buses up and down the street.  It's very convenient because you will eventually get tired of walking.  

One of my favorite things about Denver was that they have random colorful pianos up and down 16th Street. Anyone can stop and play music.  

Denver also has a great aquarium.  Eva loves aquariums and every place we go, she insists we go to the aquarium....she likes to collect snow globes from each one :)

The inside of the Denver Aquarium is so beautiful.

 Did I mention they have a mermaid show??! According to them, they're the only aquarium with mermaids.  We missed the first part of their show, but what we did catch was so great!  Eva loves mermaids so seeing them swim around was like a dream come true for her.

They also have a Bengal tiger.  He is absolutely beautiful and he walked around a lot so we got tons of great pictures of him.

Like every other aquarium we've ever been to, this one also had a petting area.  Eva still doesn't like to touch the horseshoe crabs or stingrays, but she did touch the star fish.

If shopping is your thing, check out Cherry Creek Mall.  It's in a great side of town and it includes a lot of high end stores.  It also has a large play area, which Eva thoroughly enjoyed :)

We knew we wanted to catch a Pro sporting event while we were in town, after all, they have the Broncos, Nuggets, and Rockies, how lucky are they?! We went to Coors Stadium, which is also downtown, to watch the Rockies vs Nationals game.

At Coors field, you get a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance.

The view at Sunset was gorgeous.

The city view at night from the top of Coors field isn't too shabby :)

By far, the most beautiful part of Denver that we saw was Lookout Mountain.  It's just outside of Denver in Golden, CO.   

You get some great photo ops with the mountains as your background.  We ran across a nice family that offered to take our picture.  

You can also get a great view of downtown Denver in the distance.

They have a cute gift shop with AMAZING home made fudge and lots of cute trinkets and expensive keepsakes.

One of the other reasons Lookout Mountain is so popular is because Buffalo Bill's grave site is located there.

If you're a history buff, this is definitely a good place to stop.

Along with aquariums, Eva and I also love zoos.  We decided to go check out the Denver zoo on the hottest day.  Can you say 106 degrees? YIKES.  We wound up seeing the new Toyota Elephant Passage and that's about it. That's how HOT it was that day. Lame?  Yes, yes it was.  Odd how 106 degrees there feels so much worse than the 106 we're used to in TX.

Oh well, at least Eva got a carousel ride out of it :)

When we looked up places to eat in Denver, Casa Bonita kept showing up.  My uncle warned me that the food there was lame, so I wasn't expecting much. 

  
While the food is indeed the lamest Mexican food EVER, the restaurant itself is pretty neat.  It's weird as hell, but neat. 


There's a 30 ft waterfall complete with fire jugglers and divers.  They put on a puppet show and all kinds of other stuff that kids just eat up.

Yes, that's him diving off the cliff still holding lit torches.

There are different seating areas and even though everyone wants to sit near the waterfall, I thought the mine part was cool.

I'll just warn you now that if you take your kids here, they may never want to leave.  There's an arcade in  here and a jail where you can take pictures.  It's super sensory overload in there.  It was definitely a weird restaurant...after all they even featured it in a South Park episode. You have to order your food before they seat you.  They managed to mess up my mom's order pretty good, but like everyone else says, you don't go there for the food.  The margaritas were just okay, but their sopapillas are free and delicious!  


We spent almost a week in Denver but only got to a few things.  There is so much to do

 there.  It's definitely a place I recommend visiting at least once :)