Casa Bonita

Another great attraction in Denver is Casa Bonita. When I told Paul about this place he couldn't believe it... 'this place is real?' he asked. Oh yes it is! It is exactly like in the South Park episode where they are calling this place a Mexican Disneyland-like restaurant. With cheap food and pitchers of Margaritas I want to add, but fun altogether ;-)




You get the full Monty... with mariachi band, cliff-divers, Blackbeard's cave, jugglers, etc. Of course it is focused on kids and it seems like all of my friends growing up in Colorado had at least one of their birthday parties there. No wonder that this place is a well known attraction in Denver :o)

But all fun has to come to an end someday. And Paul had to call back to Ireland and recover from the Mexican food somehow.

So thanks for calling over Paul and I hope you had a great time in Colorful Colorado!

And if YOU think 'I want to see this 'magical' place Casa Bonita too'... where dreams come true... as long as your dreams consists of cheap Mexican food, cliff-divers and Margaritas... let me know!

Visitor from Ireland

And the next visitor was lining up already... this time from Ireland. As they don't have that many mountains in Ireland (okay, okay... Dublin Mountains. But I still wouldn't call them mountains compared to the Rockies) Paul was amazed by the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Of course these little fellas were also lining up to prepare themselves for the tough upcoming winter. Tough more from the perspective of fewer tourists showing up and feeding them. While Paul and I liked to see those squirrels people from around think more in terms of a plague about them... funny that.

But it seemed like the Rockies wanted to welcome Paul the Irish way. A short while into our hike it started raining. Oh well... that gave us a chance to visit Coors brewery instead. How stereotypical Irish... but still a lot of fun ;-)

Pikes Peak

Living in Colorado must be great for everyone who is into climbing... there are numerous of 14k mountains around and two of them are even accessible by car!
It's not that hard to guess which mountain I was 'climbing' with my friends from Germany :-)




We went for Pikes Peak close to Colorado Springs which beside a paved road features a mountain railway... but we preferred the thrill of driving the 13-miles of windy road ourselves. I was amazed that there are no barriers between you and the abyss which must have made the rally to the top of the mountain quite interesting. And this might have been the reason of why they are not doing it anymore too :-)

But the view from this 14,110 feet
(4300 meter) mountain is astonishing. Even though the afternoon thunderstorm including a lightning warning for the top of the mountain made us rushing downhill again... quite an interesting experience... and my first 14k I was 'climbing' ;-)

Visitors from Germany

Finally I got visitors this summer! Last year around the I had already two people showing up but this year it seems like it took quite a while for somebody visiting me in Colorado. But this time I got three visitors at once... Andre, Alex and Robin (from right) from Germany were over here last week and I showed them around.

They saw already quite a bit of the States as they were touring the National Parks two weeks before they stopped by in Colorado. But of course they were quite impressed by the Garden of Gods in Colorado Springs, especially the sunset is fabulous over there.


Even though the weather wasn't that great we had a great time... well... 80 F (27 C) feels already a bit chilly after the high 90s (35 C+) we had over here the last few weeks ;-)

Fourth visitor

The long weekend last week was a quite busy time... not only did we have Thanksgiving weekend which is a travelers worst nightmare but also my friend Torsten from Nuremberg showed up. He is over here for two weeks and we will fly back to Germany next week together. But till then we had lots of things to see and survive...


Like this small snow storm on Wednesday which made driving a mess and in particular driving to the airport more exciting then it should be. Fortunately the ground is not frozen yet and in the late afternoon the roads were clearing up already.



But our first destination wasn't the beautiful Rockies or other Coloradan sights... with him I went straight to Las Vegas again! Find out in the next post if we made it back or if we even lost our return tickets in Sin City Vegas!

Third visitor

And our third visitor arrived on the shores of the new world! Hans-Peter from Munich, the first German speaker. As you can see he caught a sunny weekend over here so he had to convince Justin and me that his shades are trendy in Europe. Maybe in the 70s that is :-P


But there was no much need of shades where we went at the weekend. Hans-Peter didn't like the idea of hiking or sightseeing so we did what we can do best... partying ;-)


I wonder now who will visit me when we actually have snow and I end up skiing the Rockies. Is it maybe YOU?

Second visitor

What a great weekend again! Not only Ireland won their match in the Rugby World Championship versus Georgia (thus our green outfits) but also I had my next visitor: Niamh called over from Ireland for a week in Colorado! After the rugby we also had to experience a truly American sport... baseball!


So we went to my new home team The Rockies who have a very nice stadium downtown Denver, Coors Field. They were playing the Florida Marlins for a place in the playoffs which sounded like a exciting match. As I know the rules and like to watch baseball from back in Germany (go Corbacher Colliders!) I expected a bit more then the 2-10 score for Florida.


On the other hand I was warned, everybody over here seems to think that the Rockies suck. But it was not that bad at all... we had a great time eating nachos, drinking beer and watching the match.

I was just a bit surprised by the Rockies mascot... is this a little dinosaur? What happen with these fellas again? Not that I want to draw some parallels here ;-)

Thanks Niamh for calling by and the great time we had watching the sports and climbing the mountains!

First visitor

Finally! My first visitor! Most of you know Alex from Ireland, from my house-parties or other night outs downtown Dublin... she was over here on a road trip through the US and stopped by for a longer weekend in Denver!



And of course this was a great opportunity to show her the beautiful Rocky Mountains. Apart of a little thunderstorm in the mountains we had a fantastic weekend hiking through the wilderness... well as wild as it can get in a National Park ;-)



We also met many native Coloradans here... most memorable was this meditating squirrel.

Mille Grazie, Alex for the great time!

And ask yourself... can YOU be my second visitor?! ;-)