In which Roz and Layla wear out their legs and flee bear rumours on the hills of Boulder

by Roz
 

Though our plane was delayed and we didn’t get into Boulder until late lunchtime-ish, we had a fairly useful / practical time of identifying furniture and such for our new flat.  And reading The Crimson Petal and the White (in my case) and learning Japanese characters (in Layla’s case – she’s more virtuous than me).  Our new home for the next five days proved to be a slightly scary but very well equipped shed in the garden of a very fancy house on one of the loveliest streets in Boulder (though disappointingly at the top of a hill).  All in all, we were relatively content - we’d really struggled to find somewhere good to stay at a decent price because it’s the Iron Man competition in Boulder this weekend which is bringing thousands of people to the area (rather them than me!) and although a shed isn’t optimal, at least it’s quite a nice one… (note by Layla who booked it: it’s a perfectly normal tiny studio apartment!)

Having kind of settled into our shed (studio! - L), we headed down the hill for soup at a hippy nearby café.  This was delicious, though we studiously avoided “asking more” about their particular brand of spiritualism, as the menu suggested … We then pottered down the Pearl, the road which is Boulder’s downtown, dodging talentless violinists and rather skilled circus performers before collapsing in a pretty park next to a farmer’s market by the river.  It was very lovely to read our books but guilt / parsimony was calling – I’d heard that the Contemporary Art Museum is free on market days and it seemed a shame to miss out.  So we popped in, and enjoyed some of what we saw, including some rather pleasing map pieces.  This done, we went back to the park and alternately enjoyed reading our books and watching some people practising acro-yoga (the latter was very cool, and I feel that I need to add this to my yoga repertoire).  Eventually, it was getting towards evening and so we pottered on to a cinema to see Paper Towns.  This proved to be not particularly good (I find myself much irritated by tales of nerdy children needing to turn cool) but the popcorn was nice and it was bang next door to a grocery store (which central Boulder seems too hippy to be enthusiastic about otherwise) and this handily resolved our dilemmas about food for breakfast and so forth over the next few days.  We then hopped on a bus back into the downtown and had a delightful cocktail in Salt before retiring to our shed. (note from Layla: studio apartment!)

We slept quite well and enjoyed having breakfast on our little patio next morning.  Our landlady came by to check on us, and Layla cleverly persuaded her to offer to let us use her washing machine (Boulder also seems too cool for laundrettes in the downtown area).  This ended up occupying more time than we expected but there was a nice breeze whilst we waited it out – and Layla demonstrated excessive virtue in using the additional time to sort out the cancellation of our phone contracts (or rather to begin the process of doing so).  We eventually headed out and tried to hire bikes.  Alas no success (the early bird had rented all the bikes at the nearby store).  We began heading to another store when we had the genius idea of hiring bikes from the Boulder bikeshare scheme.  This was exceptionally easy and soon we were heading towards the Boulder Creek path.  We had a very jolly time cycling along the creek with locals, surrounded by mountains and into Boulder Canyon.  And the way back was even jollier, since it proved more downhill than we’d anticipated and so we barely moved our legs. (I recognise that this isn’t everyone’s aspiration when cycling, but I liked it…)  We parked and – once Layla had taken another call about cancelling our phone contracts – headed to a delightful Tajikistan tearoom.  This sounds unlikely, but had been a gift from a town which Boulder is twinned with in Tajikistan and was beautiful.  Lunch matched the promise of the building.  We headed back to our shed after a little post-lunch pottering in a delightful bookstore feeling sated and cheery.  We spent the rest of the afternoon very delightfully on the patio with our books and then got an Uber to a faraway lake in the late afternoon to do a little paddleboarding on Boulder Reservoir.  This proved delightful. We Ubered home and I made dinner and then lay in our garden hammock with my book whilst Layla washed up.  Later that evening, we meandered down to a nearby venue for an open mic comedy night.  This was a combination of brilliant and hideous.  It was hideous because there were only three people in the audience (including me) who weren’t performing – and the performers weren’t terrific.  And it was brilliant because I talked Layla into signing up and doing a story. She was unsurprisingly the best performer of the night and I felt proud. 

Next morning, we woke up to the sound of an alarm clock.  We’d decided to make sure we were up and about early to avoid the midday heat. We more or less succeeded, and were in Eldorado State Park (known as Eldo by the locals) before 9.  We took a lovely trail called Rattlesnake Gulch uphill (well, lovely other than the uphill aspect of it) which gave us amazing views of the Rockies, the river, and took us to an overlook of the Continental Divide and past the ruins of a hotel which had been burned down in 1916 (we sniggered unkindly at less than 100 years being deemed worthy of archaeologists’ attention, but still enjoyed the vision of a glamorous hotel in the mountains with fountains and the like).  Suspicious of the chances of getting any phone signal to summon an Uber at the place we’d come from, Layla came up with an excellent hike which took us closer to town along a flat path through meadows. Sure enough, we hopped out on a deserted road, summoned an Uber and headed to Chautaqua Park, which everyone had mentioned to us as a must-see when we said we were coming to Boulder.  Our park experience started in a delightful dining room which had been built between the wars and which had a sense of glamour about it (and a tasty kale salad and apple cobbler).  After lunch, we sat in the park and I listened to an orchestra practising and read my book whilst Layla called her parents.  The orchestra was lovely and on a whim I persuaded Layla that we should go and find out whether they’d be performing that night, and the cost of the tickets.  We discovered that by buying tickets which would entail sitting on “historic” benches from the 1800s we could afford to go – and that it was the same orchestra I’d been enjoying that afternoon.  Pleased with our plan for the evening, we went for a tiny hike in the park (which ended more speedily than we planned, when a bear sighting ahead reminded us of our enthusiasm for not being eaten by a bear) before heading back into town.  We whiled away some time very pleasantly in another bookstore and coffeeshop, before heading home for dinner in the sunshine.  We headed out later on (relishing a free bus for concert-goers) and then settled down on the historic benches (which I thought were fine; Layla’s wriggling suggested she did not concur).  It was an interesting programme – Beethoven and Sibelius, but combined with projection of landscape photography from Colorado parks onto a giant screen above the orchestra.  I loved lots of the images and liked the idea of the combination – though I also found the images somewhat distracting from the music. But it was terrific to be there – it’s clearly a local institution and was a beautiful venue.  We finished the evening with a cocktail at a nearby bar and congratulated ourselves on another cheery day. 

We were up early again today, to beat the heat again.  This time, we were off to something called the Mesa Trail which takes you from the Eldo area all the way back through the hills and into Chautaqua park that we were in yesterday.  We feared it might be a bit too similar to yesterday but were also frightened off a number of the other options by the descriptions of their difficulty.  But we needn’t have worried.  The 7-mile hike took us along the foothills of the Flatirons (the mountains round the city) through meadows with lots of beautiful flowers with alas a little more uphill than would have been optimal (though the odd runner who passed us gave no hint of sharing this view).  About five miles in, we were conscious we were running short of water and decided to deviate to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (which is exactly what it sounds like, but is also a museum).  I’m ashamed to say that our first stop was the water fountain and our second stop the vending machine.  But we then enjoyed being taught about what makes a tornado and such like.  Back on the trail for the final 3 miles (NCAR added about a mile to our route) we enjoyed going downhill at last.  Conscious we weren’t far from the place where the bear had been sighted yesterday, we remembered our lessons from hiking in Canada and occasionally broke into song (which obviously scared off passers by, if not bears).  Back in Chautaqua park at last, my lobbying for a second kale salad was successful and we were back in the dining hall.  Layla went for the interesting option of biscuits and vegetarian gravy.  I felt – once I saw her option – that it was one of the few occasions where the salad eater could be smug that her food choice was not only more healthy but also more delicious…

Sore-footed we summoned an Uber to take us the short distance back to our shed for a shower and such like and are now happily ensconced in the bookstore / coffee shop near our home and Layla is sitting with her Japanese textbook as I type which seems an unlikely reward for so much exertion…