pasta with friends

after the tour, there were two things on my agenda: to see my friend, sheri, and to go to the anss social, where i was supposed to meet my anss buddy. if things had gone as planned, i could probably have done both. but, our other friend, kara, also wanted to join us for dinner and she was flying in that evening. so, while waiting for her to get in, i missed the window of opportunity to drop in on the social.

as soon as kara got in to her hotel, sheri and i walked from our hotel to hers. though we were all staying at hyatt hotels, kara's hotel was the grander one. it had wonderful art such as this installation.

though i had a list of restaurants where i wanted to dine, i didn't think we could really get seating on a friday night with no reservation. so, we asked the concierge. we decided on venice ristorante. though we were all rather starving, we had to walk to 16th street to catch the free mall bus to get us in the vicinity of the restaurant.

the place was rather full, so it's a good thing that the concierge had made reservations for us. we had a very personable waiter, and the service was very good.

for appetizer, i ordered the crabcakes with pesto sauce and gorgonzola sauce. this was alright. sheri had the insalata fresca: "field greens salad with tear drop tomatoes, aged balsamic vinaigrette and shaved parmesan cheese." i didn't get to try it, but it sure looked good. kara had the carrot soup. that was pretty good.

for my main entree, i had the triangoli d’anatra: "triangle shaped ravioli filled with roasted duck; served with a wild mushrooms, marsala wine and cream sauce." this was yummy--probably the best out of the three main dishes. sheri had the lobster and halibut ravioli. as i don't like fish and i often find lobster tasteless, this dish was just alright for me. kara had the gnocchi with gorgonzola cream sauce. i don't know that i really like gnocchi, but this was tasty enough.

the concierge at kara's hotel had given us a coupon for free dessert. i think we were only supposed to be given one dessert, but our waiter gave us two complimentary desserts. we went with mousse al cioccolato and vulcano al cioccolato (with two kinds of gelato). mmm. mmm. what a way to end the meal. even better since we didn't have to pay for them.

after dinner, i took this picture of union station, right outside the restaurant. pretty, isn't it?

we had a great dinner. while i felt bad that i didn't get a chance to go to the anss social and meet my anss buddy, i can't say that i regret choosing to be with my friends. i usually only see these people at these conferences, so i'll take it when i can get it.

dinosaurs & bison

on friday, i had an easy morning while i waited for my roommate, deanza, to arrive. i hadn't had breakfast, so as soon as she got there, we headed out to find food to eat. it was a cold day. (when i arrived on thursday, it was warm, but the cold sure came in on friday.)

we headed out to 16th street mall, where we saw these signs welcoming ala to denver.

that's the colorado state capitol in the background.

after walking a couple of blocks and looking at a couple of menus (it was too cold to go any further), we decided to eat lunch at paramount cafe. for appetizer, i ordered the calamari steak. i don't know what i was thinking. i think i just saw calamari and figured it was going to be good. i didn't read the steak part. it's supposed to be served with unagi-shoya sauce. i don't know if that's what it was, but what i got was a lot of mustard. it was disgusting. we could barely eat it. they offered to do it again, but i declined. they were very nice, though, and took it off the bill.

for the main entree, i had the gorgonzola & mushroom bison burger. that's my second meal in a room to have bison! but it had gorgonzola & mushroom, so i couldn't resist. and we were in denver, so we gotta eat those strange meats. it was pretty good.

i'm not sure what my roommate had. i believe these were mini buffalo chili dogs. i think she liked them.

after lunch, we headed back to the hotel to wait for our tour pick-up. we had decided to go on a 4-hour mountain parks tour. our first stop was dinosaur ridge, an area right outside of denver proper that is full of dinosaur tracks and fossils.

according to the guide, the area used to be an ocean and where the tracks are used to be the beach. here are the tracks--they've been covered with ash to make them more visible.

the guide said that these are the tracks of a mother and baby dinosaur. alongside are the tracks of a predator trying to separate the baby from the mother.

here is the sign about what kind of dinosaurs probably made these tracks.

we also saw what is called a dinosaur bulge. it sounds a bit dirty but, apparently, when a dinosaur steps on the ground, its weight pushes the ground down so what we're seeing is like a mold of its foot from the bottom.

we then saw these fossils. can you see the dinosaurs in action?

this was very cool to see these. i've been curious about going on a dig, but it's not something i've thought about recently. who knew that i'd be experiencing this in denver, especially since this wasn't included in the tour description.

from dinosaur ridge, we could see red rocks park, originally known as the garden of the angels. the guide said that these colored rocks gave colorado its name. he also said that these sandstone rocks were formed by shifting ocean plates.

we proceeded to the famed red rocks amphitheatre, a natural open-air amphitheatre. there are two huge monoliths here that provide great acoustics: ship rock (first photo below) and creation rock.

here's the stage, plus a view of the side seats against creation rock.

this is an awesome place. these rocks are really cool. if it hadn't been so gray (it was beginning to snow already), these pictures would have come out with even better color. if it hadn't been so cold, we might have been more tempted to roam around. as it was, we quickly moved inside the museum for some warmth.

we then went up to higher elevation. we were keeping an eye out for wildlife. but, because the weather was beginning to get bad, i think the guide was in a bit of rush. we saw some deer and a fox. we saw a couple of deer by the side of the road, and the guide turned around so we can take shots. they didn't even run away when we stopped near them.



we drove to the buffalo bill museum & grave. one of the first things we saw in the museum was--surprise, surprise--a stuffed bison. we also saw this poster for his wild west show, as well as various artifacts (firearms, costumes, native american things, etc.) i played dress up and pretended to ride a horse in there.

then we had to brave the cold so we could see buffalo bill's grave. the guide said we could see three states--colorado, wyoming, and arkansas--from the site, but we couldn't tell if that was true. it all looked flat to us.

i think the tour was supposed to include a pass-through the city of golden, home of the coors brewing company. but the snow was really coming down (and perhaps, we were running out of time, too), so we just headed back.

on the way back, the guide showed us the city's herd of bison. that was a grand sight, with the snow settling on the bison's backs.

all in all, we enjoyed the tour. it was cold, but we saw more things than we expected. that's always good.

fine dining

last year, at the ala midwinter meeting in philadelphia, a few of my emerging leaders and i dined at morimoto (iron chef morimoto's restaurant). we had such fun that night and i haven't gone fine dining lately, so i decided that i wanted to do so in denver. there were a number of restaurants i was interested in trying, but i settled on restaurant kevin taylor.

i went with liladhar, my coworker and friend. (i'm glad he agreed to go right away as i would have been hard-pressed to find someone else to accompany me.) we went for dinner on the day that i flew in. the setting was pleasant enough, nothing extraordinary, but the food was good.

we decided to do the tasting menu. i had the five-course one, and liladhar had the four-course.

for our amuse-bouche, we had lamb belly ravioli with truffle foam. this was quite good. i could definitely taste the truffle.

i don't normally drink, but i figured i might as well go all out. i ordered this cosmopolitan, which had pomegranate juice in it and a dash of italian soda for some bubbles. (i regretted this order later on in the evening because it made me sleepy and cranky. i really should know better.)

for our appetizers, i had the "caramelized snake river farms pork belly with honeycomb root vegetables, tellicherry pepper, barbeque broth." it was good. it was tender with a crispy skin. yum! liladhar had the "butter poached alaskan crab leg with black mussels, gold potatoes, tiny vegetables, saffron infused caviar."

for our soup, we both had the "roasted maine lobster and truffle bisque with sweet corn custard, chanterelles, herbed potato crisp." the custard was interesting, but not necessary. the potato crisp was made of two very thin slices of potatoes placed with herb in between and baked--that was good.

for my extra course, i had the "chilled poached maine lobster salad with red beet carpaccio, micro spinach, mango slaw, mango citronette." i don't normally like beet, but this was tasty--it was sweet. the tangy mango was also very good.

for the main entree, i had "roast colorado bison tenderloin and braised back ribs with golden delicious risotto, asparagus, tellicherry sauce au poivre." the meat was good, but i was not a big fan of the risotto. liladhar had the "snake river farms kobe beef ribeye and kobe cheek 'cordon bleu' with melting leeks, exotic mushrooms, sauce béarnaise." that was a good deal. on its own, it would have cost $65, but that was also the price of the four-course tasting, so he essentially got three extra dishes. i'm not a beef connoisseur so i don't know if the kobe (american-style) tasted any better, but the cordon bleu was delicious. that was probably the best out of the whole meal.

for dessert, i had the "bittersweet 'liquid center' chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream and chocolate syrup"--in other words, lava cake. i was going to try something else, but i gotta have chocolate. and, it was good, of course. liladhar had the "warm pecan cranberry coffeecake with vanilla bean semifreddo, persimmon jam, macchiato anglaise." this was fine, but i preferred my dessert.

afterwards, we got these after-meal chocolates. i was already full, but i couldn't let these go to waste. the bluish one was dark chocolate--that was good. the other one was too sweet--i didn't finish that.

it was a wonderful meal. there were other librarians there, including one i knew. and a guy proposed to his girlfriend while we were there. i think i'll have to do something like this at the annual conference in chicago.