"Are You a Good Witch, or A Bad Witch?"

That's the question one must ask after seeing Wicked. Was the green witch bad.... or just misunderstood? I have my opinion, but you must form your own!

I know the "Wicked Weekend" was more than 7 days ago, but I finally got all my pictures dumped off my cameras. It's time to share the fun mini-vacation I had with my seester in Denver.

First of all, let me just say that I have heard stories about how wonderful the mountains around Denver are. I wouldn't know. I didn't see any. The city was socked in by low clouds the entire time we were there.

I took the top picture from our hotel the first morning we were in Colorado. This is looking toward Denver. The bottom picture is the second morning, after receiving several inches of snow. Thankfully it only delayed our flight by 30 minutes. But you can see how hazy the skyline was.

Our flight landed on Friday afternoon. We picked up our rental car, plugged addresses into the GPS and with Red sitting confidently behind the wheel, headed into the City. Our first stop was the U.S. Mint. I thought it would be fun to see where cash is made... and hoped that maybe they handed out $5 bills as souvenirs...?

Apparently, I didn't study the tourist information well enough. Not only do they not hand out free cash to all who tour the building, but you also have to have a "ticket" and a "reservation" to go inside. Nor do they allow you to go inside carrying a purse and if you have your camera along, the battery has to be removed. We knew none of this, except that they weren't going to hand out cash. (My bad!)

We ran our purses back to the car, planted them securely in the trunk and rushed back to get in the "stand by line," trying to get into the last tour of the day...

As the ticketed tour goers were admitted into the very secure building, the friendly (and I use that term very loosely!!!) guard started counting people in the standby line (and I use the word "counted" loosely too. He just waved his hand in the air like he was counting and moved his mouth, but it didn't seem that he was even looking at the people). He stopped "counting" right in front of Red and I -- who happened to be at the end of the line. He allowed those people to go on the tour and dismissed us without apology. We were the only two who didn't get to go inside.

Okay. We told him (under our breath) that he could keep his filthy lucre and headed back to the car. We only paid for 1/2 hour of parking anyway and with all the running back and forth our time was almost up.

Our tickets to the show were Friday night, so after visiting one of Red's very good friends, and finding our hotel we hopped onto mass transit and travelled back to the city. We were so glad we rode the train!! Parking downtown is not easy and this dropped us almost at the front door door of the theater!

We ate dinner at a small deli next to the theater. It was very crowded, but the sandwich was pretty delicious! And the show? Well, it was AMAZING!!! Our seats were pretty high up... okay, you couldn't get any higher... but it didn't matter!! We rented some $5 binoculars and that's all we needed. We used them when we wanted to see close-up, but when there was a lot going on the stage, we could see just fine without them.

I absolutely LOVED the show! As a matter of fact, I place it as my 2nd favorite musical, right under Les Miserables. And, as I've seen Les Mis more than once, I would love to see this again. Anyone want to come along?

Saturday we decided to jump in the car and explore. We found a delicious little place called The Eggshell for breakfast which served NON-Denny's type of breakfasts -- fabulous -- and I picked up my first Onion newspaper. Then we headed out to the Red Rocks Ampitheater. Red has attended concerts here before, but it was my first time experiencing it, and I'm so glad we did!



It was pretty awesome hanging out on the same stage where ♥ John Denver ♥, U2, The Beatles, Jethro Tull, John Mayer, etc. have played their music. PLUS, the visit there was educational: I learned that if I ever attend a concert there it would be okay to have a seat at the top of the stadium. It was heart attack worthy hiking all the waaaay back to the top from waaay down below where the stage is!! :)

On our way back to Denver, we stopped in Golden where we got a delicious hot chocolate at a cute little coffee shop and took a picture of the Coors plant (which was extremely stinky).





After a quick stop at a very decent cupcake bakery, we found ourselves at the Aquarium. That was interesting, to say the least. It had great reviews on the internet, but we found it simply okay. I would take Inigo there and even Buttercup would probably enoy it, but as two adults hanging out... probably not again.


The highlight for me was touching a sting ray. I did this a year ago at SeaWorld, but this time it was different. This stingray was much slimier than the first. It was disgusting. But I'm proud to say that I did it.

We spent a relaxing evening eating lots of red meat at a steak house and the next day headed to the airport! Like I said, even though Denver got 8 - 10" of new snow, we were very lucky that our flight was only delayed by about 1/2 hour.

I am so glad I got to go on this trip! Thank you, Red, for inviting me along! And thank you ♥ Max ♥ for coming home and spending the weekend with the children! And thank you Buttercup for texting me regular updates on the homefront. :)