I had two nights in Denver to start this trip and I'd say that was enough to see what I wanted to. Thanks to a stroke of luck when leaving the airport, I got free train and bus travel for the day as someone had left a day pass they'd finished with on the ticket machine. With that and the free 16th Street mall ride bus, it made it really easy to see all I wanted to see downtown including conflunce park, union station, the state capital building and city park for the sunset. Sadly it's a bit hazy at the moment due to forest fires in the state, so I didn't get the great view of the sunset over the rockies and the Denver skyline that I was hoping for.

Day two started early as jet lag had me awake at 4am, so I was ready to head out for breakfast at 7, taking the mall ride (again!) to Snooze at union station. I had to try the pancake of the day: chocolate chips with pecan maple syrup. Then after moving my bags over, to kill time before check in, I walked 13km in a loop from my new hotel to Washington park (which has pelicans on a lake), up to Cheesman park and back down part of the Cherry Creek trail.

That evening, I met my Intrepid tour guide Jeremy and the other two (yes two!) people joining the tour. There will be 7 of us in total but the other 4 have been on another joining tour, so weren't at the welcome meeting. The meeting was short and sweet so the three of us headed off to the baseball afterwards to watch the Colorado Rockies vs. St Louis Cardinals. We only saw one interesting innings and the rest were non-scoring, but I guess that's the nature of America's pastime!

Notes from Denver:

I love the 16th Street mall ride! I've never known a free bus service that literally comes every minute. If you can't see at least one going in each direction, the something odd is happening.

Bean bag toss is everywhere. I don't know if this is an American thing in general, but I don't think I've ever noticed it quite so prominently everywhere else.

It's not easy to casually walk from park to park, and the parks aren't quite as exciting as the visit denver website would have you believe.