Northwest Jewelry

We had only 2-1/2 days in Denver, a whole list of things to do, and we accomplished only a few of them.  I previously showed you Red Rocks natural amphitheatre.  We also went to the Genesis concert–I could have kicked myself for forgetting my camera–I would have loved to get some close-ups of Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford–the concert was fantastic by the way!

Anyway, we also drove around downtown Denver a bit.  Not on purpose, we were lost most of the time–lol, but got a couple of interesting pictures.  Denver is has some interesting contrasts–it’s a combination of beautifully designed government buildings, but with homeless people sleeping in the parks surrounding them.  On the outskirts, the town is kind of depressing–not much greenery, not too clean, and lots of people who appear to be down on their luck. 

However, there’s also a lot of money in that town–I think they have three pro teams–both the Rockies and the Broncos played the weekend we were there.  And there are several first-class museums, including art museums, there, as well as some very nice shopping districts.  It’s very evident by the infrastructure that there’s been a ton of money put into that town–but as Rick observed, after all that money was spent, it doesn’t look like anyone’s kept it up much.

Hope I’m not sounding too negative–we really enjoyed Denver, but we expected more beauty than we saw.  To be fair, we were mostly in town, so didn’t get to see much of the natural beauty, the exception being the spectacular Red Rocks.

Here’s a picture of their Capital Building–the top is plated in gold–very, very striking, especially on a sunny day:

It’s hard to see the gold at that angle, but it really stands out.  Here’s a not-so-great picture that shows the look of the gold better:

 

And the pictures below were just an interesting piece we saw downtown–I’ll show you both sides–we just thought it was really cool-looking!

Here’s another side:

The Titanic exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and History was very good.  We saw the IMAX film Ghosts of the Abyss prior to the exhibit, and it was perfect.  It’s the film James Cameron made about actually exploring the Titanic and explained how they got all the artifacts that are in the exhibit.  Very, very good and and I highly recommend both.   Couldn’t take any pictures there, though.

The museum also had a dinosaur exhibit, which was also very cool–here are some of the pictures:

Here’s the other half, with Rick educating himself….. 

One other picture–when I took this, we thought it was another government building, but it’s a high school!  Pretty elaborate.

I’d really love to go back when we can spend more time.  If you get the chance to visit this very interesting city, you won’t be sorry!