The Armchair Traveller

After only a few hours sleep it was suddenly Wednesday morning and I was in Denver! Mum and Lynsey were up and about in the hotel room preparing for the first day of the conference they were here to attend and I took the opportunity to be as lazy as possible because I was here for a holiday! I stayed in bed a little longer and then read an American newspaper from cover to cover to see what it was all about. The first thing that struck me was the size of the paper, every country seems to have their own shape – in NZ they are A2 in size, in the UK they seem to prefer A3 – the USA Today paper is the length of an A2 page but only half the width, which makes it rather awkward to read actually. The other thing which struck me about the American paper I was reading was the lack of global news, it was a newspaper that was entirely America oriented – interesting, do they know there is more world outside the boundaries of the USA?!

Eventually I got hungry so it was time to head out of the hotel room and explore what the area had to offer. The hotel we were staying in was the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood which is just outside of Denver city (we had a stunning view out to the city centre from our hotel room window) and is mainly a business park area with a whole lot of cafes and restaurants scattered amongst the office blocks. I had breakfast at Denny’s a real American food chain. I had an omelette with ham and cheese (the most processed and orange looking cheese I have ever seen!) and this came with a giant hash brown and a toasted bagel with cream cheese – an absolutely huge meal!! I was very full after that. I decided to walk around the area and see what I could uncover in this part of Denver. What I discovered was more restaurants, some petrol stations, a pharmacy, and a small pond with some giant ducks hanging out in the water. Not the most exciting sights to be seen. However it was really nice to be out in the warm sunshine walking along what was basically an empty sidewalk – most London sidewalks are horrible and overcrowded, and it seems that here in Denver you drive everywhere, you don’t usually walk.

The landscape of the area was lovely – in one direction you had sprawling flat desert-like land and in the other direction there were hills leading up the very impressive Rocky Mountains. The buildings in the area we were staying were not big skyscrapers dominating the landscape but were modest sized buildings which remained understated amongst the backdrop of the hills. The sky was a great shade of blue and the clouds were incredibly white, the colour of the landscape was brown and so was the colour of many of the buildings. Interestingly though, I didn’t find the colours of the city drab, rather they were calming.

In the three and a half days I spent in Denver my morning routine remained the same – sleep in, read the paper, eat breakfast somewhere, go for a walk, come back to the hotel. Before I left London for this holiday I had discovered the hotel had a swimming pool and I had planned to spend my time relaxing by the pool and enjoying the sunshine. I was disappointed to discover the pool was attached to the hotel gym and it was an indoor pool! So I decided not to spend my time at the swimming pool but instead read books, wrote and drew in my journal, and ate lots of food.

On my third day in Denver I talked to the friendly staff at the hotel reception desk and discovered that the complementary hotel shuttle could take me out to a nearby shopping centre called Colorado Mills Mall (apparently listed as a top 10 attraction in Denver!!). It was an absolutely huge mall and to my delight was full of factory and outlet shops for some very big brands! Yay! Cheaper items meant I could buy more if I wanted! So I spent about 4 hours at the mall shopping up a storm, getting myself some new clothes and even picking up a giant box of Lego from the Lego outlet store for my brother who is a Lego fanatic! Once I had finished shopping I called the hotel to come and pick me up.

While waiting to be picked up I was joined by another lady who was also staying at my hotel and had spent the day shopping at the mall. We ended up having a really interesting discussion about America. I discovered that she was an American who has visited every state in her country so she had a lot to say on which places were worth visiting and which were not. She had such a passionate enthusiasm for her home country that she inspired to want to see more of America. She didn’t recommend places like New York because she felt they are too overcrowded and touristy, her suggestion was to visit the national parks (like Yellowstone National Park) and also to do a road trip up the West coast, starting in San Diego and going all the way to Vancouver Canada! When I asked her if there was one place in all of the USA that she felt everyone should visit her answer was San Francisco (now before it grows too much bigger). She in turn asked the young man from the hotel that picked us up to take us back to the hotel and his answer was the West Coast in general, and also his hometown of Denver! I might have to explore the idea of visiting more of the USA at some point soon…roadtrip along the West Coast anyone?

The people I encountered in Denver seemed very friendly. I enjoyed shopping there so much more than I do in London – customer service was great, everything was very relaxed and friendly. Unfortunately what did annoy me was that all the prices on items did not include the standard tax so you always ended up paying a bit more than you thought because tax got added on at the check-out. A strange experience in Denver was discovering that while Americans and New Zealanders both speak English it is very different type of English and things can get lost in translation! The best example of this was mum asking for a glass of water at a restaurant and having 4 staff members look at her blankly not knowing what she was asking for! Who knew that ‘water’ was a tricky word to understand! Actually my own experience of spelling my name for someone at the hotel reception desk was amusing as I kept saying ‘Zed’ for the first letter of my name and she just looked at me blankly until I realised I needed to say ‘Zee’ – then she understood me!

On Saturday morning, my final morning in Denver, I went for one final walk and got myself a bagel and a coffee for breakfast which I took back to the hotel room and ate while I packed up my suitcase ready for the next part of my holiday. By 1pm Mum, Lynsey and I were saying farewell to Denver city and by 5pm we were flying away from Denver, Colorado on our way to the capital of the Lone Star State of Texas – Austin.

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