We are a few mins walk from the main shopping street (16th Street): a pedestrianised area full of vibtrant bars and restaurants and shops. One of the best things is that there is a free shuttle bus or busses, which travel up and down the length of the street allowing everyone to hop on and off at will all day until 2am in the morning. A great idea.
A unique (I think) feature of this city is that it has placed a number of pianos at points along 16th street – yes, real pianos – for anyone to play. We have seen many people just sitting playing some great music and being accompanied by passers by, who dance about or clap a beat with their hands. There’s a certain joy about the place, which is refreshing to see. The other thing that strikes you is the fact that there are chairs (metal garden chairs) just placed along the central reservation of the street for people to use. The pianos and chairs are not secured or bolted to the floor – they are just placed there. How trusting is that? We both agreed that we would never see such a thing in the UK, which is a shame.
There is a darker side to Denver, of course, as in most cities. There are a lot of homeless people and tramps wandering the street in a completely unintimidating way. Some even sat playing the pianos with others in their situation. There’s a certain tramp who looks ancient and walks around in what can only be described as rags. He looks like a prophet, with long flowing beard and long torn overvoat worn to strips of cloth. The scene is almost biblical.
Our first night in Denver was spent in a Mongolian restaurant. We were given a bowl each and asked to choose from a large selection of raw meats, fish and vegetables from a bar. Then we had to choose a sauce or combination of sauces and put them into another little bowl. Finally there were spices to choose from. All this we took to a large circular kitchen with a circular hot plate, where a guy cooked what we brought to him. He used two long metal spatulas to skillfully mix, flip and chop our food, adding our sauces and serving it all on plates for us to take back to our table. We were able to return as many times as we wanted. We only managed two trips!
We returned to the city and found our favourite bar (Paramount Cafe) again and sat for ages chatting, people watching and drinking in the sun.
This evening we went to a steakhouse before going to the theatre to see a comedy called ‘I love you, you’re perfect, now change’ – how fitting for our wedding anninversary!!
Now it’s almost midnight and Rachel’s asleep while I catch up on the blogging. Tomorrow is RV Day and a whole new adventure. But for now, it’s the end of our 25th Anniversary and I’m thinking how lucky we are to be spending it happily together in such a lovely place.
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