Denver, Colorado. When I think of Denver... I don't know what I imagine. Mountains, I guess. And Coors beer. So I didn't know why I was going there, besides needing to visit a place in Colorado. There is a hostel though so it was a cheap place to stay.

I had two days in town. The first day I arrived by overnight bus from Las Vegas at 10am so I had most of the day to do stuff. I stuck with my old favourite of getting a tour of the Capitol building. It was outstanding. They spent a huge amount of money on it back when it was built in the late 1800s. A particular type of local marble was used and they actually cleared out the quarry in constructing the building and they don't think it exists anywhere else in the world. So I hope they never need any for repairs.

There's a huge amount of brass around the building and there are three guys whose job it is to polish the brass every day. And it looks good for it. There's a dome at the top and some stairs inside to climb up for a view out. The view of Denver was nothing to blog home about but it was cool to see the Rocky Mountains away to the west, some with patches of snow still on the tops.

After the capitol I got an hour in the state history museum before it closed. (Making this the third state where I have been on a tour of the capitol building before going to the state history museum - the others being Texas and Oklahoma.) They had some good dioramas there and a cool laser-effect illustrated map to explain the settlement of Colorado.

After my disappointment at not getting to the movies in Las Vegas I made up for it in Denver. I was exploring the downtown pedestrianised 16th Street Mall and loving it. It's about a mile or so long and full of shops and resturants on both sides of the street. And there is a free bus service that runs up and down with buses every few minutes so you've never left waiting for long. More cities should offer that. I saw a large cinema so I got to see The Dark Knight, which is an excellent film by the way, and I enjoyed recognising parts of Chicago from my stay there, which is where the film was shot.

On my second day I mostly chilled in the common room before I went into town so sort out my bus ticket for the following day. I had a nice long coffee in Starbucks as I updated my journal, which I had been unable to do in the common room because I kept being distracted by the TV.

In making my selection for a place to get dinner I tried avoiding obvious chainy places but for some reason I found myself going into ESPNZone. I think it's because I knew there would be plenty of TVs for me to watch as I waited for my food to arrive. I was right. Sat at the bar I had three screens in front of me and many more on the surrounding walls, so wherever you are sat you can see three games going on at once.

The two people next to me noticed me going through my just-purchased CDs and that got us talking. They were a couple of military nurses, one younger guy and one middle-aged woman. We talked for ages about a lot of things. She was fairly drunk already so that made it more entertaining, especially when we got onto politics and she blamed Bill Clinton for Osama Bin Laden still being out there. Jose and I disagreed with her. I could easily tell which way they were voting in November!

After they left the barmaid passed by me and said she couldn't believe what that woman had said about Bill Clinton. So that got me talking about politics again. She was also apologising to me because before, when I had been trying to place my order, everyone was too busy to stop and ask me what I wanted so I had grabbed a passing waitress and placed it with her. The barmaid was very sorry and said she felt bad. I said it was okay because I had my food now. But that didn't stop her passing me a shot of Jack Daniel's and, later on, a pint of beer that had been poured but not needed. Finally, when a group of three young girls sat next to me to get a shot before going on clubbing, I was trying to help them with some suggestions, and they encouraged me to have a Scooby Snack with them. It was very nice but they cost $8 each! My enormous beer had only been $6. None of those three extra drinks appeared on my bill - just my food and the first beer I had ordered. I thought that probably made up for me being ignored at the start. I felt slightly bad so I left a quite generous tip, but not enough to cover all the extra drinks - that would be silly.

This is one thing I'm really going to miss about America when I come home - bars. Pubs are great and they have their place but a good bar is a wonderful thing for people like me. I can go in there on my own, sit at the counter, watch some TV and the barperson will often talk to me, or I'll get talking to someone next to me. The barmaid there was a great example of good bar staff - not for the free drinks but the conversation that went with them. Or maybe I was so drunk from everything she was plying me with that by the end I just thought it was a good bar.

I can tell you it wasn't easy getting back to the hostel at midnight after all those drinks and trying to book a hotel room and car hire for my next stops.

I only got a small taster of what Denver is like but I thought it was a nice place. There's not a lot for a tourist unless you're keen on doing every museum you come into contact with - you'd be better off going out into the surrounding area, like the mountains. But the people I came into contact with were all very nice, which is rare in a large city.