On the fourth day of my 10 day visit to USA I decided to visit downtown Denver with my sister. After that great rafting trip in the Colorado river, I had spent the next two days doing my University assignments. There were two papers to submit and it was a lot of work. My sister got a bit annoyed by this. I had come all the way to visit her to do assignments at her place. Though I understood her annoyance I was helpless. On the third day, I put in some extra effort to complete my work and planned a visit to downtown the next day.
Denver is the capital of the state of Colorado. It is known as the Mile High city of because of its elevation which is around 1600 Mtrs. One of the fastest growing cities in the United Stated it has also the added benefit of being close to the Rockies which are just a couple of hours away.
The next morning after a good breakfast, me and my sister sheereen took the local train to Downtown. I am a huge fan of public transport as mentioned in my numerous previous posts. So adding the experience of riding in the public transport of another city excited me. As Sheereen’s home was in the outskirts of the city, it was a 40 min ride to downtown. The train sped past different neighborhoods and past the University of Colorado. Some sections of the tracks were elevated giving us a good view of the surrounding rocky mountains far away. We got down at the Auraria Station and after a brief stroll took another bus to the Capitol building.
We got down a stop ahead of our actual stop and started walking. We spotted the Capitol building a bit ahead. We could see its Golden Dome shining in the bright sunlight as we approached it. As we neared the building we could see that a lot of restoration work was going on. We took went around it in a circle having a closer look. Built in the Neo classical style this building houses the home of the Colorado General Assembly. Built in the 1890s, the dome of the building houses real gold leaf which was added during the Gold Rush period in the year 1908. The front of the building had more construction going on and we couldn’t get on the steps to the famous Mile high marker.
The day was getting more hot now and I was looking for somewhere to sit. Directly on the opposite side of the Capitol Hill far away I could spot another building with similar architectural style. Google maps told me that this was Denver City Council Building. I spotted a swathe of low trees in the park in front of it. We crossed the road and walked towards and inside the park. There were a number of food trucks parked selling a variety of food stuff. We looked around to see if we could find anything interesting but we did not so we walked away towards one of the trees at the edge of the park. We selected one offering a nice view of the council building and sat there in the shade. It was relief to get away from the scorching sun. This heat reminded me of the summers of India. I wasn’t expecting this in US honestly.
After that rejuvenating rest we resumed our walk and sheereen suggested we check out the nearby Denver Public Library. Established in 1889, the Denver public library system houses around 2 million items including books, reference materials etc. We went inside and took a leisurely stroll. As my sister and me are both avid readers we spent a lot of time checking out the different books. There were multiple levels with conference rooms, computer rooms etc. One thing that stuck me was the presence of a large number of homeless people. There were too many of them.
From the library we walked past the building of Museum of Art with its quirky design. Then we decided to head home as the heat was becoming unbearable now. Before doing so we headed off to a local Indian restaurant called Zaika and had some biryani there which was easily one of the worst Biryanis I ever had in North America. After this we then started for home taking the same train line and were back home by 4 pm.
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