It's been a pretty good three-day weekend here in Colorado. The weather has been beautiful and we kept ourselves nicely busy. It was a little on the hot side but there was usually a nice breeze to offset the heat. And it also helps that the humidity wasn't 200%. I don't think it even went above 50%.
As the title suggests David and I went into downtown Denver to walk around not one but two art festivals. Since we had the long weekend, I wanted to do something and have that something be cheap. Initially, I just discover the Downtown Denver Arts Festival. We both love walking around arts festivals because there are just so many interesting art forms to see. And it's usually outdoors, so you get some fresh air to boot. Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney was the big one we always went to when we lived in Orlando.
Such a GORGEOUS day!
So after a lazy morning, we ambled our way to the Denver Performing Arts Complex where the festival was being held. With the weather being beautiful and it being a long weekend, people were all over the place. But, surprisingly, it didn't seem extremely crowded. I think it also helped that we got there fairly early.
Those statues are permanent structures.
And, per the norm, we saw a lot of beautiful interesting artwork, and some really weird ones. The jewelry booths never appealed to me because they are usually an aesthetic that I do not like. I wanted to take so many photos but I didn't. There are a good number of vendors who really frown upon taking photos of their work. So as a rule of thumb I don't take pictures of individual booths.
A little farther up was where the graduation was
As we got closer to the actual complex, it started getting more crowded and we discovered there was a high school graduation. And to go off on a tangent, some of theses kids were huge! It seemed like they towered over me by 5 feet! So anyway, we walked around the festival for an hour or so. I wasn't sure how big the festival was going to be so when we realized we saw everything and it was still pretty early, we decided to stay see what else there was to do.
Thank God for the smartphone and internet. As we took a small breather we looked around to see what else was going on. Honestly, there were a ton of things going on. But we discovered another arts festival called Art Stir Denver. This one was located at the 16th Street Mall which was only 2 streets down from where we were so we walked over.
The 16th Street Mall is an outdoor mall in Downtown Denver where regular cars do not drive on. There is a complimentary bus service that drives back and forth but that's it. At first I thought that was dumb because you'll end up breathing in a ton of nasty fumes, but then I saw on the buses that they are hybrid. Well, then...
As we were walking, we saw plenty of entertainment making our way to the actually location of Art Stir.
Like, Homeless Gandalf and a painted piano...
According to David, he tells people's fortunes
And like this,
A graffiti artist at the festival
We walked around the festival for another hour or so and when we were done, decided to go eat and watch a movie at a dine-in theater in Littleton. There was actually another event going on, but it wouldn't start for another hour and a half if we decided to wait. It was called the Denver Day of Rock and it was an event up and down the mall with 5 stages where a bunch of bands would perform.
Since we needed to take the lightrail to Littleton and there was only one showing of Star Trek that was playing at a time that would work for us, we decided to leave.
We had been to a dine-in movie once before this time and it was at the AMC in Downtown Disney. The experience was definitely different from what we experienced. It was more western looking to begin with.
It makes sense when you realize it started in Texas
And the service wasn't as high-tech as the AMC was. You had to write your order down on a piece of paper and place it in a holder where your waiter would see it. The food was pretty good though. And the most interesting thing is that they do not play ads prior to the movie. There were previews, but those stupid ads that most theaters now play were not present. Instead they play clips and things that are related to the movie the movie you are wathcing. So since we were watching Star Trek, they showed Star Trek clips. I swear to you that they pulled these clips off of YouTube. There was some weird clips that were from the cartoon, or different shows that parodied Star Trek. And clips from the video board game? This was NOT what I expected. I was expecting more of the history or Star Trek and behind the scenes stuff. At least is was kind of entertaining.
So anyway, we both enjoyed the movie. And had a really fun day out.
Looks like a great day! We actually just went to the AMC in downtown Disney for a movie and lunch yesterday, how funny :)
ReplyDeleteIt was a good day for a dine-in movie =D
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