Holiday Days 6 to 8

It's the altitude!

Sooo...turns out the level of oxygen in the air reduces a bit the higher up you go.  The result of this is breathlessness, tiredness, nausea and a little bit general confusion.  Add to that a bit of jet lag and it's all peachy!!

On August the 6th I managed to fly out to Denver and I watched three films...three!  It was a 9 hour 40 minute flight in the end and I didn't sleep at all which was random.  I did eat everything I was given, and drank soooo much tea.  I must say I loved the flight!

When I landed I met my friends and we headed to a bar for a welcome beer.  The menu was insane, there were well over 60 beers to choose from, maybe even nearer one hundred.  The thing is that beer is a big thing here in Golden.

Day 7 started with hiking boot shopping.  I bought some new, properly fitted, boots as a birthday present from the money my Mum, Dad and brother gave me.  The boots came in handy for the walk we did over lunch.  A leisurely 4.5 mile hike up to a lake past some moose, as you do!!

I'm finding the elevation here difficult to comprehend.  The car park was at 10,300 ft, higher than the highest mountain near Pescara, Gran Sasso.  My 'ground level' base is my friends house which is actually 5,675 ft up, compared to Pescara's 0 ft.  Apparently the altitude doesn't only affect breathinf due to the oxygen level but baking cakes too. 

After hiking we went for dinner in the town of Bouldner which has a really lively pedestrian centre with lots of buskers and street artists. There was one man, in his late 50's, who put himself in a 20x20 inch box, some skill!!

Day 8...a well deserved lie-in and pancakes for breakfast before heading to an amphitheatre called Red Rocks 'cos, yeh, it's in red rocks!  It was beautiful. We then met another friend and did a tour of a brewery, the biggest single brewery in the world, Miller Coors.

As my friends Mum works at the Miller Coors brewery, we got a v.i.p. tour with extra tasting samples and bonus sites to see. The beer making process is pretty long winded taking 55 days.  It was really interesting and provided a great opportunity to catch up with my friends over free beer! 

The evening event was a painting session. A group of us followed the instructions of an artist to create a copy of a painting.  It was fun but really intense as we had a time limit to follow so had to go pretty quickly. It was amazing how different everyone's painting turned out even though we were following the same instructions.

The night ended with some happy hour sushi that tasted better than anything you can get in Pescara but cost less than half the price.  The is certainly a huge variety of food at ridiculously reasonable prices.