Sunday, April 13, 2008

Denver is a strange place

Today I explored a bit of Denver. It's actually a very nice place. At the moment it's a bit cold, but it wasn't snowing or raining and sometimes the sun came out, so not to bad to walk.

For me, Denver has two faces. You've the nice looking (and big) buildings. But if you look the other side (or in some alleys) you'll see the other face of Denver; some places are rather old.


Another thing that took my attention: the smoke out of the ground! What's happening there? Does Denver have lava streams? Are they making some cookies under the ground? Strange ;-)


There's a nice street called 16th Street. On that street there're a lot of shops, bars and places where you can have some food. Also Denver is getting ready to receive Collaborate 08! In the streets you see the signs for the Oracle conference.


Although you can only register from Sunday onwards I had a quick look where the conference is going to be held. In fact I thought it was in the Hyatt hotel, but it's just across the hotel, in the Convention Center. It's a big place! Very nice... even the bears like it ;-)



The first day in Denver was nice. Although to give you another anecdote why I think Denver is a strange place. I asked the way to the Apple Store, which is located in Cherry Creek Mall. I was told it took about 20 minutes to walk there (from 16th Street)... yeah right! After 45 minutes I decided to go into a shop to ask where that mall was. The answer: "oh that's too far, although if you're in good shape you can get there in 30 minutes or you can take the bus". I was waiting for the bus and when it finally arrived I said I want to go to the shopping center. The bus driver told me he didn't go that way of course! I decided to walk a bit further and after 2hours and 45minutes I finally arrived. The shopping center itself was nice. As my feed were hurting, I took a taxi to go back and after 10 minutes I already arrived in the hotel.

3 comments:

Marco Gralike said...

Thanks for sharing. Maybe you should have bought some Nike's in the Mall ;-)

Bill Ferguson said...

LOL. I hate downtown Denver (and most downtowns for that matter) with a passion. The Cherry Creek Mall is quite a ways from the Convention Center. I sure wouldn't have attempted to walk it!

Though Denver isn't nearly as old as many other big cities (only around 150 or so years old), it does still have parts that go back to our old 'cow town' days.

I haven't been on 16th Street since they turned that into a mall many years ago. Back when I was in high school (mid 70's), we used to have (car) races on 16th Street at night. You could only go one block at a time because of all the traffic lights, bt it was fun back then.

Bill Ferguson

Bill Ferguson said...

I should also say, I only laughed because the same has happened to me in different cites, you are not alone. :^)

Bill Ferguson