We’re a few months late on this post, but better late than never right? This was the first trip that we took with our Southwest Companion pass, which basically means I can book a trip on Southwest using money or miles, and Cody can fly with me almost for free. The only Cost to her is the $5 security fee imposed on all domestic flights. Cool right? I’ve written up a separate post on what exactly that is, but it’s good for 2 years, so we have until December 2016 to fly together on the cheap!
Friday
We arrived in Denver on a beautiful sunny Friday; our flight back to Austin was Sunday afternoon so this would be a quick weekend trip. Denver airport is actually pretty far away from downtown, so we caught a bus to Denver Union Station (why is there a Union Station in every major city?). Luckily we had planned ahead and booked a hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express downtown. All we had to do is hop on the free Mall Ride shuttle and it took is almost all the way there.
We dropped our bags off, got some advice from the hotel concierge about what to do for lunch, and off we went to explore the 16th street mall. This is a mile-long stretch of outdoor shops and restaurants with a free shuttle in the middle that goes up and down the street. We were absolutely starving so our first stop was Lark Burger, a burger place I had went to when I visited Denver the year prior with my dad. Cody had this awesome tuna burger, while I opted for the more traditional cheeseburger.
We had a few hours to kill before the Bassnectar show at Red Rocks, so we just walked around and checked out the various shops. Lots of tourist shops as expected, but there was also a huge candy store that had candy from all around the world.
Finally it was time for the concert! I had booked us 2 tickets with a local bus service that takes a group of people to and from Red Rocks. This was great for us as I didn’t want to rent a car and drive all the way out there. The bus was an experience in itself; we walked to the pick up location and there’s a line of people with cases of beer and bottles of liquor. Turns out I had inadvertently booked us on a party bus, and people were drinking and partying the entire ride up to Red Rocks. The ride was only about 30 or 40 minutes; the last time I saw people drink this fast was freshman year of college! The driver was of course sober, so we arrived at Red Rocks safe and sound.
The concert itself was awesome, I got to see one of my favorite electronic music producers, Joker, along with Bassnectar. Bassnectar had a weekend long residency at Red Rocks, and he had a different person open for him each night. The venue itself was simply breathtaking, we watched the sunset over the Colorado countryside, and afterwards the stars came out and you could even see downtown Denver.
We danced our hearts out, caught the bus back to the hotel, and immediately went to sleep.
Saturday
We woke up in time to catch free breakfast at the hotel, which is something of a miracle after the long night we had at Red Rocks. We hadn’t planned any specific activities for this day, so we spent some time figuring out where we wanted to go. We settled on the Natural History Museum, Cody had actually been there as a kid and she has a poster from there that’s hanging above our computers at home. The zoo is also within walking distance, so we decided to spend the day learning about natural history and looking at animals.
The weather outside was gorgeous and we really enjoyed lazily exploring the museum and the zoo. We rounded off the day with walking around the outdoor mall again, and some Indian food.
Sunday
Sadly our trip was already over, but we made the most of the almost two full days we had in Denver. We had just enough time to catch another free breakfast at the hotel, and then hopped on the bus back to the airport. We arrived back home to some good news, our friend Ravi picked us up and told us that he had gotten a puppy over the weekend. First stop, Ravi’s house!
-Nick