I've now been in Denver for two weeks, though it seems like it has been much longer. You see, contrary to previous training events that were in Salt Lake City, I am now being trained to fly a new jet - the Embraer 175. If you are familiar with the Denver airport, you will know that it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. This picture was taken across the street from my hotel to give you some idea. There's nothing to do in the area and even less to eat. One of my classmates is a habitual visitor to Ruby Tuesday's whereas I have been buying cheap burritos from 7-11. Things are rough.
Having just completed my systems validation test (160 questions on things like ACMPs, PTUs, EDPs, and even a RAT), I was ready to unwind without hitting the books for once. My ol' buddy Greg was able to fly out to Denver for the weekend to explore downtown Denver with me. There is now a train that connects downtown to the airport, which is a relatively new thing.
35 mins later, we were at Union Station. We didn't have any particular destination so we wandered aimlessly for a bit until we ended up by the capitol. There were some nice gardens and such nearby as well. By now we were already getting hungry, so we commenced our search for lunch. We settled on a place near Coor's Field that had lots of outdoor seating. We, of course, had to find a place in the shade for my unfortunately pale friend whose long time nemesis - the sun - was fairly strong that day.
They had a large field for bean bag toss/cornhole, or whatever you might call it. I wasn't very good. The folks next to me must have been in a league. They looked very serious about the whole thing and were quite good. I was happy if I didn't send a bag sailing toward a fellow restaurant patron. The arrival of our food interrupted our intense matchup, so we retired our game and noshed.
After eating, we went to the Jagged Mountain brewery, one of many microbrews in downtown Denver and split a beer flight. It consisted of an orange ale, a tequila-cask ale, and others. Some were better than others. Then we continued walking to a different part of the city. We walked along the river by a place called Confluence Park. We debated going to an aquarium along the river, but it was both expensive-ish and crowded, so we elected instead to check out the nearby REI, which was massive (and also expensive).
For shelter, we sought refuge in the Great Divide Brewing Co. We had a couple beer flights including a rice beer, a hibiscus ale, and their signature Yeti ale. When it appeared to have calmed down outside, we went out to get dinner at a place called Ophelia's. I guess back in the day it was like a tacky Moulin-Rouge-esque peep show/burlesque show or something to that effect. Now it's just an eclectic restaurant that plays obscure foreign films on a screen where the stage was.
