On the 28th we wandered toward the train station on 16th Street, much of which is mostly pedestrian. 16th Street is supposed to be a major tourist attraction in Denver, but it's just weird. It's shopping, all right, but it's Starbucks, TJMaxx, Starbucks, Pot Belly, Starbucks, Chili's, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble...... Why would you go to Denver to shop at TJMaxx, when you can shop there at home (and not have to carry your stuff home on an airplane)? And I am not exaggerating the number of Starbuckses!
One of my friends advised me to find The Tattered Cover bookstore. It is a lovely place, well worth a visit. The atmosphere (if not the building materials) reminded me so much of Borders, when Borders was Ann Arbor's own home-grown bookstore....... We enjoyed walking around inside, soaking up the ambience. This was the sort of local business I had hoped to see along 16th street, and it was the only one I saw that enticed me to go in.
Looking southeast along 16th street (toward downtown).
Zooming in on the clock tower and the fancy streetlights.
We've walked to the northwest end of 16th. This view is southeast down 16th Street, from Millennium Bridge.
We didn't actually know what Millennium Bridge was, when we were there. We saw these enormous fasten-to-the-ground things, but couldn't figure out what their point was. It seems that we were standing on the bridge (which goes over a couple of railroad tracks), but didn't realize it was a Big Deal. Or maybe it isn't, but it has a fancy name?
Looking northeast. Denver has a LOT of construction going on. Cranes everywhere. Much (most?) of the construction seems to be housing. It seemed that there was a great deal of new housing downtown. Which struck us as odd, given how few pedestrians there were downtown. So much housing, so few people?
Just a bit to the left of the above. See what I mean about more and more and more housing?
(I wonder what the tanker train cars above usually haul.....)
More cables for Millennium bridge, and more housing.
Don't know what you call this thing, but the bridge is suspended from it. Pillar? Pylon? I don't know.
Looking northwest to the other side of the river. There is a lot of park land along the river. This is as far as we went. It was cold out (high in the 20s).
Heading back toward the hotel. Appreciating the textures/colors underfoot.
A section of short curvy wall (with snow on top), embellished with stone tiles.
Really cool stone tiles.
Here's the clock tower, reflected.
Here it is in person.
Downtown Denver is full of really long alleys. And pigeons. (And, much less picturesquely, bums. Given the paucity of pedestrians, there were almost as many bums as not-bums. Not my favorite ambience.)
Did I say it was cold? Cold!
We found the bridge hotel. This was the first time we went to a bridge tournament with no pre-arranged partners for my better half. They have online partner-finding help, and in-person bulletin boards, too. He found a couple of different people to play with, and played a couple of days with each. One he would gladly play with again. The other ... not so much.
If you spent some energy designing hideous carpet, do you suppose you could do a better (worse?) job than this? Ouch!
I went back to our hotel room, and was pleased that I could (sort of) see mountains!
Between the glare on the windows, the haze, and the hotel-roof junk between me and the mountains..... It was a tantalizing view rather than a satisfying one.
Here's a zoomed in look, between bits and pieces of hotel-roof mess.
The morning had a lot of sun, but the clouds began to roll in............
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