Meandering Through Boulder On A Monday Afternoon

I drove up to Boulder this past Monday afternoon to just walk around and enjoy the ambiance of that remarkable city. Before parking on West Pearl Street, I drove through the Mapleton Hill neighborhood, one of Boulder's oldest and filled with 19th century homes. Some of them have views such as the one in the photograph on the left that I took on Mountain View Road. And this is all just a few short blocks from the Pearl Street Mall, which is the heart and soul of Boulder.

The Pearl Street Mall was a pretty mellow place that afternoon, but there were still people on the restaurant patios and in the bookstores, with others just hanging out on benches enjoying the day. No matter when you are there, Boulder seems to have a special energy about it that makes you feel like this is the place to be. I think the presence of the University of Colorado, with its 30,000 students, has a lot to do with it. There was a line out the door at Trident Booksellers and Cafe when I walked past, and there are always people checking out the Boulder Bookstore a few blocks away on the mall. You have to love a city that loves books.

Just past the mall on East Pearl Street, two people were sitting outside a coffee shop along with a dog that was more than happy to pose for a photograph, and just beyond there were a fair number of people on the patio of the Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery, as seen in the photograph on the left. The Mountain Sun has been around since 1993, and since then the owner has added three additional brew pubs, including the Vine Street Pub and Brewery on East 17th Street in Denver. I remember going there once for dinner with my friend Stuart, and after we each ordered a beer, found out that they only took cash. We desperately scrapped together the money for those beers to avoid having to work in the kitchen and left to find a restaurant that took credit cards. When the Vine Street Pub reopened after the pandemic, they finally began accepting credit cards, and I assume that is the case for the Mountain Sun Pub and the other locations. Thank God for that. As usual, it was a fun and relaxing day up in Boulder, and definitely worth the 45-minute drive from Denver. If you can't afford to live there, visiting for a few hours is the next best thing.