Rocky Mountain Memories - An A-Z of Colorado

Advantages: Fantastic place, great mountains, nice people, cheap too
Disadvantages: It's a long way

...After a two week holiday in Colorado, I don't know where to start writing about it so I thought I'd take a stab at another holiday A-Z to give you just a small taster of our experience. I hope you enjoy it! A is for Aspen Renowned as a rather 'up-itself' ski-resort frequented by the rich and famous and those who wannabe rich and famous, we were a little reticent to go to Aspen but curiosity got the better of us. We'd also been told that we couldn't afford to stay there - and proved that wrong by getting the cutest little cabin at a place called L'Auberge d'Aspen for just £36 for the night. Against all odds, we really liked the place because all the skiers had gone home and the summer season wasn't due to start for a few more weeks. On the down-side it piddled down half the time we were there, on the upside it was still...

koshkha 28.05.2008 · Read review
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Review of General: Colorado

Colorado's National Parks

Advantages: Stunning scenery
Disadvantages: Avoid winter months, beware of altitude sickness

...Colorado has two main National Parks: Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountains National Park. Mesa Verde National Park is located in south west Colorado and people go there to view the historic ruins of the dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans or Anasazi built more than 800 years ago, rather than for hiking, biking etc. The park houses the greatest concentration of Indian ruins in North America and is truly fascinating. The dwellings are set in cliff faces and mesa tops and there are several concentrations of dwellings within the park including Wetherill Mesa and Chapin Mesa. Cliff Palace is the largest ruin with several hundred rooms, including ceremonial ?kiva? chambers. In the park there are several camp grounds and lodges along with the Chapin Mesa museum and panoramic viewpoints. The museum explains the lifestyle of the Anasazi...

NIKKIT 05.05.2004 · Read review
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Review of National Parks (Colorado)

I love a nice Butte! But you can keep the snakes.

Advantages: The Buttes are Awesome
Disadvantages: The drive and the snakes are really long

...In May 2008 my husband and I went to stay with a dear friend in Colorado who was a fabulous host and guide to the Denver region. Unfortunately whilst we were out having a great time exploring, poor Kris had to go to work but at the end of our visit he managed to get the day off and so we asked him where he most wanted to go. Pawnee Buttes was his choice for a day out. Three go out on a adventure We loaded up the rental car and headed out of the city in a northerly direction. I suppose I should have asked more questions before we went like "How far is this place?" and "What on earth are we going to look at?" but I didn't. Perhaps it was a fear of admitting that I couldn't remember from my school geography what a butte was that stopped me interrogating a bit more. He'd not let us down with his other hot tips for tourism so we...

koshkha 07.09.2009 · Read review
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Review of Pawnee Buttes, Colorado

Colorado Springs

Advantages: widens your horizons, new experiences, appreciate 'home' more, educational
Disadvantages: culture shock, loneliness, missing friends, lots of stress

...Some people like change, travelling, and new horizons. I am not one of them! So when it became clear, over ten years ago now, that our family would need to move for two years to Colorado Springs in the USA, I found the idea very stressful. Indeed, of all the countries in the world, America was probably the place I least wanted to live. However it was the right thing to do for my husband's work, so we began the process of applying for visas. Not as easy as we thought: we had expected to be moving in January 1992, but changes in the rules meant that nobody was quite sure what kind of visa we should be applying for. As my husband was seconded from a British agency rather than being employed in the USA, he could not apply for a work permit. He thought he could apply for a religious visa, since it was a Christian mission agency...

Kukana 16.08.2003 · Read review
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Review of Member Advice on Living Abroad

It's Good - DAM Good

Advantages: Some fantastic exhibits and there should be something to appeal to most people
Disadvantages: Some of it (the Pre-Columbian section in particular) just went right over my head

...Last May we went to Colorado on holiday but were pitifully poor about spending any time in Denver despite staying nearby. So a couple of days before the end of our holiday we set off to blitz the major attractions in one day before we ran out of time. After visiting the Colorado State Capitol building, we headed off for some lunch and then to the Denver Art Museum nearby. My friend Kris who we were staying with had shown me lots of photos of the museum but all taken from the outside - he was clearly more interested in the architecture than in the art inside. So I knew to expect some pretty funky architecture but nothing about the art collection. If you live in the UK where most of the major state museums and art galleries have free entry, having to pay a hefty entrance fee is a bit of a shock to the system. I've been to some...

koshkha 05.09.2009 · Read review
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Review of Denver Art Museum, Colorado

Great product when built but bad design

Advantages: four burners, two trays and lower storage, easy on the gas
Disadvantages: very heavy, rough edges, poor instructions, no hob ring

...times now and its been very consistent. It also doesn't seem to be too hungry on gas which is good. We've had about 6 big uses of it and the indicator is still on full so thats not bad. The food tastes great. Putting the coals on seems to give it the ability to soak up some of the drippings and make that fabulous bbq smell that is as important as the food itself. The Colorado is made in China and unfortunately, it seems this is where the instructions come from as well! We like the barbecue but think that the way it is made and marketed is poor. Overall though, in terms of the job it does and the price it cost, I'd have to rate it as good....

fightgear 06.08.2007 · Read review
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Review of Focus Colorado

Tigers and Geckos (& lots of fish) at the Downtown Aquarium

Advantages: Tiger tiger burning bright
Disadvantages: On a busy day I think I would have hated this place

...We took a trip to Colorado last May and despite staying close to Denver, we really didn't spend much time in the city. With just a couple of days to go before we flew home we thought we'd better do some intense sightseeing and set off into Denver to see as much as we could in just one day. Our final stop was a trip to the Downtown Aquarium. We'd done a bit of history at the State Capitol, had a hefty dose of culture at the Denver Art Museum and now we needed a seriously fishy experience to top off a great day out. I love big aquariums so I was quite excited to see what Denver would have to offer. However I've been to enough aquariums that I'm getting a bit picky about what I like and what I don't and I've become more than a little cynical about the ploys such places employ to try to make the already fascinating underwater world more...

koshkha 12.03.2009 · Read review
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Review of Downtown Aquarium, Denver, Colorado

No rafting in Colorado!!

Advantages: Superbly well organised trips, competitively priced
Disadvantages: None really

...I asked for the Adventure Company to be added onto Ciao a good few months ago and they only recently got around to doing it. Before writing my review I thought to myself ?that logo doesn?t look right? and lo and behold I checked and the Adventure Company to which this logo refers is actually ?Colorado?s Premier Outfitter in River Rafting Vacations and Trips?. D?oh! As this is being posted on the Ciao UK site and I am not sure how many people are planning to go rafting in Colorado I hope no one minds if I review the company I originally intended, which is the one in the UK?.phew. Anyway, onto more important things ? the Adventure Company is a UK based holiday company based in Hampshire. As the name would suggest they concentrate more on the ?out of the ordinary? trips. I have travelled twice with them, once to Africa and once to...

fryera2 20.08.2007 · Read review
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Review of The Adventure Company

A Capitol Offence - how we by-passed US security by accident

Advantages: It's free and it's pretty interesting as big state buildings go
Disadvantages: You can't ensure you don't get any boring nutters in your tour group

...Last May my husband and I took a two week trip to Colorado to visit a friend who lives on the outskirts of Denver. The trip was to use up my remaining leave from the company I worked for before I started working for a new company. As a result of being a bit overwhelmed in the new role, I didn't get round to writing much at all about the things we saw on that trip. To be fair, we'd got through most of the holiday without seeing anything much of Denver so on the day before we were due to leave we thought we'd better put in a pretty intense day of city tourism to avoid the complaints of "You went to Denver and you didn't even see the......." when we got back. With great advice from our host, we set off to see the Colorado State Capitol as our first stop of the day. State Capitols - one design fits all We approached...

koshkha 27.04.2009 · Read review
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Review of Colorado State Capitol Building, Denver

---25 million people without water---

Advantages: incredible human achievement
Disadvantages: its drying up!

...Since the first white settlers crossed the great American Desert 150 years ago, the Colorado River has witnessed great change. Situated in South West USA, the Colorado is America?s twenty-sixth largest river stretching 1500 kilometres long from its source in the Rockies to the Gulf of California. It is unique in environs, being the only river to stretch from one side of the American Desert to the other. In 1928, during the New Deal period in the USA as a last resort to counter the Great Depression, people started looking into huge public work schemes in order to pump prime the economy. In 1931, they decided to dam the Colorado River, at a place called Boulder Dam. This was a huge logistical exercise drawing in thousands of unemployed people from all across America and housing them near the construction site. It paid off fortunately...

ChrisCooper 27.06.2004 · Read review
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Review of Boulder (Colorado)