Denver

I stayed at a dumpy hotel near the Denver airport on Wednesday night and got out of there as early as possible on Thursday morning. My heading: downtown Denver. I wanted to explore the city before traveling to my cousin and her husband's home in Lafayette, Colorado, about 30 miles outside of Denver.

It was an unseasonably warm although not unheard of 60 degrees in Denver on Thursday. Most people were without coats and some were even wearing shorts. I spent the morning taking advantage of the Denver Public Library's free wireless and then wandered around the museum district (I especially liked the architecture of the angular, silver art museum pictured below), through the state capital, and to various downtown neighborhoods including the 16th Street Mall, LoDo (Lower Downtown) and Larimer Square.

My biggest takeaway from Denver, besides being impressed with the snowy peaks off in the distance, was that it reminded a lot of downtown Philadelphia. There are tall buildings but they're not nearly as thick and suffocating as in New York City. The residents, for the most part, look active and fit although there was plenty of riffraff (a la Philadelphia). Although I only tried one for lunch--Pizza Fusion on Capitol Hill--there looked to be a lot of nice eateries and plenty fun places to go out. I could easily see myself living and working in Denver one day.