DENVER —
As we walk from Union Station to the city’s new Museum of Contemporary Art, my husband and I have to stop chatting. We just can’t hear each other.
The eat-splitting din of construction dominates lodo – Lower Downtown, the former warehouse area that has for years been a hub for shops, restaurants and bars. Now, it’s clearly going to be a hub for homes. There seems to be a condo going up on every street corner.
Soon, LoDo will be filled with convening Democrats. (The convention center, with its big blue bear peering through the window, is on LoDo’s western edge.) Let’s hope the delegates have a chance to explore this vibrant part of the city. But after they’ve cleared out, LoDo will once again be a good place for an apolitical visit – and a bargain for Austinites.
Three airlines (Frontier, Southwest, United) have nonstop flights between Austin and Denver, typically for less than $200 round trip. And once the Democrats are gone, you’ll be able to find a hotel room for less than $200 as well. (Right now, you’d have trouble finding one at any price.) LoDo appeals to virtually every visitor, from sports fans to shoppers. It includes Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, along with museums, galleries, shops, vintage restaurants and bars as well as hip, new restaurants and bars.
We start our tour in the northern end of LoDo at Union Station.
The Beaux Arts-style train station, now home to both Amtrak and light-rail commuter trains, was built in 1894. Walk inside and you can still see people waiting on high-backed benches and hear trains announced in the same, scratchy-voiced way they were at the turn of the century.
A few construction-strewn blocks away is the new Contemporary Art Museum Denver, which opened last fall. It’s a small museum but offers some edgy stuff, currently the video work of Omer Fast and urban paintings of Brad Kahlhamer. In a hallway, a flat window flush with the floor brings the outdoors in, but without all the noise.
A few blocks away, we escape the heat by ducking into Tattered Cover. It’s not the original bookstore of that name but, like the original, it’s in an old building with wood floors and brick walls.
And it’s so nice and airy. I can browse the books without feeling, as I often do in other bookstores, like I’m in somebody’s way.
After the browse, we hop the free 16th Street trolley. The trolley’s my favorite part of the 16th Street Mall, Denver’s pedestrian mall filled with, for the most part, the same types of stores you’d find in a suburban shopping mall. Phooey on the cookie-cutter stores, but the free trolley’s a great way to get around LoDo. One drawback: It’s not air-conditioned, so it can feel stuffy in the summer.
The trolley delivers me to a LoDo shopping area I do like: Larimer Square. Landscaped with trees and flowers, these two blocks of home-grown shops (Eve, Mariel) and restaurants always look good and smell good.
At the edge of Larimer Square is Writer Square, a floral square surrounded by a few more shops (a sheepskin store, a tobacconist) and eateries. There’s nothing writerly about it; I’m told it was named for some guy named Writer.
The trolley takes us up to Tokyo Joe’s for a bite to eat. One of the few true-Denver presences on the 16th Street Mall, it offers a limited menu of sushi, teriyaki, spring rolls and noodle bowls.
There are locations all over the Denver area, but this one has an elevated outdoor patio to facilitate people-watching.
Another quick trolley ride and we’re at our LoDo digs, the Magnolia Hotel. Magnolias are consistently good hotels: affordable, with friendly and helpful staff members and a lot of extras thrown in like free wireless Internet, full breakfast, cocktails and, at night, cookies.
The parking’s a hefty $25, though.
On our second day in Denver, we ride the trolley to its southernmost terminus near the Civic Center and State Capitol, from which we walk to the Denver Art Museum. This museum is just outside LoDo, but to visit Denver and not see it is just silly.
The museum is vast. The old section always reminds me of the Wicked Witch’s castle in “The Wizard of Oz.” The new building, with its 9,000 titanium panels reflecting the sunlight, is filled with angled spaces that give the museum even more room to showcase the breadth of its permanent collection along with temporary exhibits.
We enjoy a exhibit of impressionist landscape paintings with some surprising entries by John Singer Sargent. (It continues through Sept. 7.) And our AAA membership makes our tickets only $11.50 each – refreshing in these days of $20 major museum tickets.
Our evening plan calls for mixing old and new LoDo. We start by meeting friends at the Oxford Hotel (built in 1891) in the Cruise Room lounge. A city favorite, the room, designed in the Art Deco style of a lounge on the Queen Mary, is bathed in rosy light. It’s now run by McCormick Fish House (part of McCormick & Schmick’s), which means that in addition to perfect cocktails, you can get great seafood. We quickly down some raw oysters.
Then we head for dinner at a hip spot called Ninth Door a couple of blocks away. There we indulge in reasonably priced and delicious tapas. Among our favorites: a gazpacho with shrimp, little mushroom croquettes and a cold scallop garnished with tempura-fried parsley.
The menu changes constantly; I look forward to seeing what they put in front of me next time.
Somehow, we still feel like having milk and cookies when we got back to the Magnolia. Warm cookies are put out at 8 p.m. nightly, and they go quickly. When we arrive at nearly 9:30, we’re pleased to find a few left, but only a few. I hope they bake some extras for all the Democrats.
Helen Anders writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: handers AT
