My last post was from a trip too long ago for me to remember completely. I am going to give this one a shot ~ Our journey in Colorado was only a month ago. Here we go!
We flew standby courtesy of Southwest Airlines ~ Lucky us! We got the golden ticket on the first flight out of Phoenix! Did you know Delta Airlines does not fly direct to Denver from Phoenix? Bizarre. Anyway, we arrived took a jaunt over to the rental car facility and we were on our way. Just that easy.
OH! Sidebar regarding looking for car rentals, seems super shady but here’s a little story. Obviously, I went online to look for car rentals a couple of weeks before our planned trip. I went to Budget’s website, plugged in the details and the internet spat out a number I didn’t really like, it was somewhere around 350.00 – not terrible but – I thought I could do better. I went to another website, (I don’t remember which one but something along the lines of Kayak or Priceline) their prices were like 10.00 more so I went back to Budgets website and the price had jumped to like 375.00!
Something triggered, in my wine induced, brain…open up a new “incognito/private” browser. I did and went back to Budgets website, I got the car reserved for 188.00! for 3 full days. Tip – when looking for car and airline reservations, do so in a private/incognito window. 🙂 You’re welcome. You may know this but I feel like I just discovered a new planet.
We had a ton of time to waste before checking into the airbnb so we decided to get lost in search of food. Well, getting load was not decided but it happened anyway. By the way, Denver smells like weed and dog food. Please don’t be offended Denver people, it’s not meant to be a dig, just my observation.
Finally we found a cute little breakfast spot in City Park called Syrup ~ The staff was super nice ~ the breakfast was delish and the scenery of the park area was mellow. It is a little hipstery though – no problem for me – but just a heads up.
Check in to the airbnb was easy and there was parking behind the house – thank goodness because when we drove down the street there were cars parked the length of the entire street not one space for me.
The outside of this place and all the other houses in the area look all historic mansion types and that I love.
With that said…This place is located in Capital Hill.. I think the whole house has like 8 (complete guess) units most with their own entrances the inside of the unit we stayed in was completely remodeled and in great taste.
Here is the parking and entrance area of the little dwelling.
We dropped the car and our belongings off and headed off to the record store through the piss riddled alley. Sorry, girl from the suburbs here..it smelled horribly bad.
We spent some time rifling through the solid collection of vinyl records this store of over 40 years has, Wax Trax Records . The website is not great but the store is awesome. Did I tell you how much I love brick buildings??
After the records store, we NAPPED before heading out to the Red Rock Amphitheater!
This place is THE place to see live music. Bucket list item crossed off. Seeing live music at the Red Rock should very well be on your bucket list too.
It is a little tough to see the greatness from a cell phone photo, I wish I had brought a wide lens.
The above photo was taken a couple of hours before show time, once the music started the place was packed.
Head up! It’s quite the hike to get up there from the parking lot, at over 6000 elevation..bring an oxygen tank. 🙂
When the sun goes down, the moon comes up, the city lights, the stars combined with the music and people..it is surreal.
The next morning we drove up north. The plan was to go to Rocky Mountain National Park and make a pit stop at Estes Park. Come on now, we had to visit the Shining Hotel! AKA The Stanley Hotel. So majestic, so cool and I bet so haunted 🙂
They offer tours, we did not partake but we did some good exploring and off course had a redrum latte.
They use key cards now but these are the old creepy keys they used back in the day.
I bet there is a ghost in there somewhere… 
As I mentioned, the plan was to go up to the national park but we saw some clouds up there that made us Phoenicians nervous. So we made the decision to be safe and head back to town – off the aunts place for dinner and drinks. Jasons aunt lives outside of Denver and his other aunts, from Holland, just so happened to be in town the same time. It was great to connect with family while out of our element.
On to the next day! Another breakfast spot worth mentioning in the capital hills area is called Jelly ~ This place was our favorite eatery. I want this shirt if anyone is asking, you can order it on the website 🙂 
Belly’s full of delicious brekky we drove to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, strolled around there for a good few hours – I feel like it is geared more towards kids but it was cool anyway. I would not say it is a must see but it was still a good day. I mean, look at that view. 
Olifant!
The following day was a travel day. Not a good day for standby, delayed and cancelled flights due to wind ~ we chose to fly to Albuquerque otherwise we would have been stuck in Denver for another night, who knew Phoenix was such a hot place to fly into. I ended up leaving Jason in Albuquerque and he didn’t make any flights until the last one so it was a shit of a day but we made it home. Safe and sound and ready to start planning the next adventure.
kristilynk 