Beautiful sunshine, dark-blue sky and about 60 deg. F. early in the morning – what more could we have asked for? After a fitful sleep we were up early, enjoyed a great breakfast buffet in the hotel and started our exploration of Denver with the 16th Street Mall - a pedestrian mall, where a free shuttle bus makes it easy to get around.
On to Capitol Hill, the neighborhood around the Colorado State Capitol (*1894), where we started - typical of us - with "Capitol Hill Books" - a great second-hand bookstore, before we admired the Capitol itself. It had stayed the same since our last visit in 2008, not so the area around the architecturally superb Denver Art Museum by Daniel Libeskind (pic).
A whole new area, the Golden Triangle Museum District with the new Civic Center Cultural Complex has evolved, including modern condo buildings, a park, public art, galleries, the public library ... and, another highlight, the new Clyfford Still Museum. This is a unique museum for a single artist. Still was a pioneering abstract expressionist, who quit the common art scene early and kept about 94 % of his artwork and, though he was born in North Dakota, lived in Washington State, Alberta, San Francisco, New York and Maryland, he specified in his will that his complete oeuvre has to be kept intact and to be shown in an American City that would agree to build a permanent museum. Denver agreed and has a new spectacular museum (pic below) now.
Civic Center Park, adjacent, is used for a lot of different festivals all year long, but, also, still is an area, where lots of homeless people gather. Today there were long lines forming - not just of homeless people - to get a free lunch, sponsored by some church organisation. The priest was distributing the Holy Communion first (a piece of bread dipped in water) and then everybody got a brown bag with food and a drink. Happy faces everywhere. The view below was taken on top of the steps of the Capitol - exactly one mile high - towards City Hall.
By bus we rode along the 16th Street with a stop at Overland - a great store which started out in Taos with sheep-skin produce and now carries high-quality leather articles and clothing of all kinds (if I would have known, that they carry Stetson hats as well, wouldn't probably have suggested to peek in...). Larimer Square (see pic) is not only the oldest pedestrian mall in Denver (if not in Colorado), but also packed with great restaurants and cafés like The Market and everywhere people were sitting outside, enjoying the sun. 16th Street runs through LoDo, another neighborhood of Denver, where Coors Field, the ballpark, and the newly renovated Union Station (pic) are the main attractions.
Beyond the river a new neighborhood called LoHi (Lower Highlands) is about to attract people, formerly the old REI (short for Recreational Equipment, Inc) store stood all by itself, now there are new buildings around. Located in the restored 1901 Denver Tramway Power Company building REI is huge and provides outdoor enthusiasts with gear and clothing for camping, climbing, cycling, fitness, hiking, paddling, skiing, snowboarding and more. A outdoors world of its own, with its own testing facility for boats on the Platte River, a climbing wall, a café etc.
Tattered Cover Bookstore - one of our favorite bookstores in the U.S. – shrunk, what a shame! First floor is gone now, just the basement with its old-fashioned seating areas, chairs and sofas, is left. Best magazine/newspaper department in town, too! Needed a beer afterwards to cope with the lost of a whole floor of books and went to Wyncoop Brewing Company, one of many Denver micro/craftbreweries.
Wynkoop was the first one in Denver, founded in 1988, just when the microbrewery boom started. We were discussing over burgers and beer, who was first: Portland/Oregon or Denver, but probably it was Portland (still have to check it out). Talking of Portland, we noticed many similarities: plenty of breweries, great, creative restaurants and a vivid downtown: many young, a little weird people, recycling programs and environmental consciousness, and a relaxed, liberal atmosphere. Probably it rains a little less in Denver than in Portland, and, though both cities are into outdoor activities, show similar creativity and entrepreneurship, Denver is more down-to-earth (and less expensive).
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