| Looking out from the dome
of the Capitol building, you get a panoramic view of the city. Denver has a
population of about half a million people and so the business centre is
quite small, but quite high. The white building belongs to the Denver Post. |  |
 |
Moving round to the west you can still see the Denver Post building but now
you can also see the imposing Civic Centre from which the city is managed.
In the background are the mountains, never far away here. |
| More to the south west
the mountain peaks are even higher and the city still spreads out towards
them. We are heading that way! |  |
 |
Denver is known as the 'mile high city'. Here on the Capitol steps are the
markers. The height has been measured three times. The first one was marked
by a brass marker, but souvenir hunters kept stealing it, so the second
measurement was marked by an engraving into the stone of the appropriate
step. |
| And this is the most
recent done with GPS and satellites in 2003. It made the original marker
about a foot too high so it is the bottom marker. Despite being the 'mile
high city', Denver is the third highest state capital in the US, Santa Fe,
New Mexico being the highest and Cheyenne, Wyoming being the second. |  |
 |
A closer view of the Civic Centre. An awful lot of taxpayers' money went
into these prestigious buildings. The politicians may have wanted it but I
wonder if the ordinary people did. |
| On your right as you face
the Civic Centre is this archway which probably also has symbolic meaning.
The open gardens we are in the middle of have several impressive bronze
statues. |  |
 |
As with most US cities, shopping is done at out of town malls, but there is
a central pedestrianised shopping district called the 16th Street Mall. It
is more restaurants and tourist shops than ordinary shops. These dancers are
one of the many sculptures we saw as we wandered the mall. |
| One of the more chic
little areas is Writer Square. Here are a number of statues of children and
adults in everyday poses. |  |
 |
One is tempted to think these are unique but we have seen the Paper Boy
elsewhere. |
| I missed this ceiling
painting because I wasn't looking up, but Jan spotted it in one of the small
arcades. |  |
 |
However I did look up at the rooflines. There are a lot of new buildings but
there is still a lot of early 20th century architecture about from a time
when more decoration was the norm. This has been refurbished and some other
buildings were having work done on them. |
| This is a more unusual
style and indeed many styles are in evidence. |  |
 |
This is another older building but with some fine detail points well looked
after. It does seem as though the city and its inhabitants take pride in
their city. |
| A memory of a bygone age
when the railways played a crucial role. Denver was a major centre and the
area I'm now standing on was covered in tracks. Today this station hosts two
passenger trains a day, one each way. And neither is at a civilised hour. We
looked at travelling by rail to Buffalo. It just wasn't realistic either for
price or time. |  |
 |
Another reminder of a bygone age when ice was something you bought to keep
your food fresh before the days of domestic refrigeration. But the building
outside was beautifully restored. |
|