Denver

We traveled to Denver on April 18th for a two-day, one-night trip.

We had discussed visiting Denver about two years ago, recalling it was considered a foodie destination. This trip was shortened to one night to allow for family time on Easter Sunday.

Friday

We drove to Ontario Airport and parked in the airport parking. We spent some time in the T4 Aspire Lounge before our flight. The flight to Denver was delayed by approximately two hours; our original 8:00 a.m. departure moved to 11:00 a.m. This worked out well, as the alternative was a 1:00 p.m. flight.

The lounge was small and was being manned by a man with a colorful personality with a thick (New York?) accent. He was loud, fast, micromanagy and humorous in a uniquely eastern European or East Coast way. He was handling the check in desk mostly but would sometimes use slow periods to make the rounds with coffee, refill the buffet, direct guests to squeeze the lounge capacity (it was pretty full when we got there at 8am). He would also sometimes tell passengers to wake up and not kiss their flight. A very busy man lol. I had a feeling that he was maybe the owner of the lounge? But no, he clarified, just the best airport lounge employee west of the Mississippi. Give him 5 starts on yelp, and mention his name. (Sorry forgot name) Let’s call him Frank.

He had such an unusual engagement style that whenever he spoke with any passenger, all other passengers would turn their head and watch to see if there was a new fun drama. When we entered the lounge in the check-in queue behind a couple, Christine exclaimed “yum! (I can smell the coffee!)” but Frank immediately assumed that she was complaining about the line and told us “please wait your turn maam, you’ll be attended in order of arrival”. I laughed at the misunderstanding, and he reacted “why are you laughing? You’ll have your turn sir”

Our weather expectation for Denver in April had been around 75 degrees Fahrenheit with less rain, based on forecasts from a week prior. The forecast changed significantly, predicting 30-40 degrees for our arrival on Friday. We packed our thickest jackets. It was the first time in several years we were going into snow; my last experience was likely in Chicago around 2018 or 2019, and Christine’s was similar.

Upon arriving in Denver, we took the train from the airport to the station. We had lunch at Dragonfly Noodle. I had fish and pho, and Christine had a pork belly bao. It was day two of Christine experiencing terrible tooth pain, which made every chew painful, so we ate briefly.

We then walked to the Grand Hyatt. We noted that hotel prices in the area were very low for that weekend, around $140 a night for various hotels, including the Grand Hyatt, compared to $200-$300 on other dates in March or May. Someone at the hotel check-in explained it was a lull between the snow season and the summer season.

After resting for about an hour at the hotel, we headed out. Our first stop was Improper City bar. Christine had seen or heard about it, possibly on Facebook. It was a very loud place, a mix between a bar and a food court. There was a singles event, like a speed dating thing, going on. We moved to a nearby Italian restaurant called Dio Mio.

At Dio Mio, we had pasta. Christine had a kimchi pasta, and I had a pistachio pasta that was like a ripped pasta with pistachio in between; it had a very nice texture. We also ordered bread. We felt we ordered too much food, as the portions were larger than expected for what seemed like a fancy, expensive place. We still finished it but were too full.

After dinner, we took the bus to the Denver Central Market. By then, it was snowing hard; standing outside meant getting covered in white quickly, and the street was white. We were looking at Reddit or something and missed our stop by one or two stops. We had to backtrack about half a mile. We arrived at the Central Market around 8:00 p.m. Many places were already closing. The cake place was going to close around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., so we got a cake from there and took a taxi back to the hotel. We ate the cake at the hotel. Christine started to feel sick at this point, after walking in the snow for a while. That was our first day.

Saturday

Our plan for Saturday was to ask for a late checkout, around 4:00 p.m., then go for dinner and head to the airport for our 8:00 p.m. flight. We had done something similar on our Austin trip.

The hotel was quite “stingy.” A week before, I noticed they were trying to upsell things like an $80 upgrade for a corner room or $20 for food credit. The front desk was very firm that checkout was by 2:00 p.m., and a 4:00 p.m. checkout would cost about $80. I also felt they were trying to upsell something else. I’d never seen this in other Hyatts we’d stayed at: they had placed a water bottle in every room with a notice saying it was free if you have status, but if you don’t, they’d charge you (I recall it being something expensive, like $5, though Christine thought it might be $2). I’d only seen that in Las Vegas.

That morning, I joined the Family Wiki admin team call from about 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Christine wasn’t feeling it, and we weren’t feeling like going out at 8:00 a.m. anyway, so it worked out.

We left the hotel to have brunch at The Delectable Egg. Christine had the Denver omelette with a side of green chili, which she noted was not green but more brown/red. I had a “healthy crepe” with fruits like strawberries and bananas. The chili was super spicy, so I mixed it with my crepe, eating one spoonful of crepe and one of chili, which I found to be a perfect combination. The Denver omelette had peppers, ham, and cheese.

After brunch, we strolled around the general neighborhood. We walked into the Brown Palace hotel because we wanted to cross the sky bridge between the Brown Palace and a Holiday Inn. We went upstairs to avoid any staff potentially showing us out. From the second-floor balcony, we saw a man playing live piano for guests having brunch in the hotel. It was a nice, old-school place with a grand entrance staircase, like in Beauty and the Beast. We chilled there for a bit on our phones, and then we chilled in the sky bridge on our phones. We then went back to the hotel and took a nap.

Later, we were wondering where to go. We thought about looking for another market since we’d already been to the Central Market. I looked up markets, and it showed us a place called Broadway Marketplace south of the city. The first picture was an Ace Hardware, and it looked like it had a little food court, supply stores, and a Dollar Tree. Chat GPT had recommended it, saying people liked going there. It looked kind of boring.

We then looked up on Chat GPT and saw there was some kind of Art Festival happening that weekend in the RiNo District. I thought, “Oh, we’ve been to the RiNo District, that’s where the Central Market is.” We took a taxi to the Central Market area. I didn’t see any art market. After searching a little bit, I realized there was another thing called RiNo Park, about a mile and a half north.

We managed to catch a bus from there. We had information that public transit used tap-to-pay with a credit card or digital wallet, similar to London or New York. This turned out to be incorrect information; Denver is apparently in the process of implementing it, with some pilot routes, but it’s not system-wide. When we got on the bus, the driver said the fare was $2.70 or something like that each. We tried to pay with a credit card, but he said we couldn’t. He said he’d give us a ride but to please pay next time. Then he asked if we had any cash. We had five dollars. We were missing about 50 cents for two fares. The driver tried to make the system accept the five dollars and give us a little pass. He gave me one senior airport day pass and Christine one regular day pass (non-airport), which apparently came out to five dollars.

We went to RiNo. The art market had about 20 tents, with people selling typical stuff like scented candles, sculptures, and t-shirts. There was music playing, and it was next to a train line and a food market. We walked around, took a look, and had some yucca fries and a drink.

I wanted to have some noodles before we went to the airport. I searched around. Chat GPT said there was a pho place at Union Station. We went to Union Station but couldn’t find it. I physically remembered seeing people with some sort of Asian-looking noodle dishes in the food court area on Friday, but there wasn’t anything like that. It was just typical train station food like hamburgers and a bar.

We ended up going to Cholon, an Asian Fusion restaurant, around 4:00 p.m. They asked if we had a reservation. The restaurant was wide open, with maybe two tables taken. She made a point to say we didn’t have a reservation, which I found stupid as the restaurant was empty and it felt pretentious. We could enter fine. We sat at the bar because I wanted the cushier chair. Because we got there at 4:00 p.m., they said we couldn’t order from the proper menu, only happy hour items like sushi rolls and dumplings. They looked a bit overpriced.

We crossed the street and went to a Korean Fried Chicken place called Mono Mono. I had said it looked better and cheaper. It was like a sports bar. It was funny; on one side of the wall, they had three TV screens: one showing a K-drama, another showing a basketball or baseball game, and another showing anime – “the trifecta,” catering to all demographics. We weren’t too hungry, so we just had one fried chicken. It was kind of not well made, or perhaps they were trying some weird experiment.

Then we took off to the airport. I thought, “Great, we already have an airport day pass for me, so we just need to upgrade Christine’s ticket to an airport ticket,” because the train to the airport is expensive, like $10 or $12 each. As we were on the train, the inspector came and asked to see our tickets. He noted I had a senior ticket and said I wasn’t a senior and needed to show proof of discount. We explained that the bus driver gave it to us due to our cash situation. He said, “Okay, fine, don’t do that next time,” and “Thankfully, I’m only giving out warnings today.”

We got to the airport and went to the Centurion Lounge. The food was fine; I think it was better than the LAX Centurion Lounge food-wise. They had a nice chicken dish and some dumplings which were very decent. There were a lot of different food places, and it wasn’t too crowded. We found a nice high-backed recliner chair, and I took a nap there. We had some dinner.

We came back home. Our flight was delayed by about 15 minutes or so. We picked up our car very easily from Ontario parking around 10:00 p.m. and were home by 11:00 p.m.

Denver Airport Conspiracy Theory

I was watching old videos from Youtuber 헬마우스’s debunking the Korean right wing in the hotel, and came across this hilarious debunking of a Korean right wing youtuber, “스피카”, who rehashed in Korean language the claims that the Denver Airport was the product of Bill Clinton and his Illuminati minions (or the other way around, idk), in addition to claiming that the Holocaust was a Jewish exaggeration and false, etc.

So of course we had to take commemorative photos of all the “signs of the Illuminati”, with the wing-shaped airport building which is supposed to resemble the eye of an ancient egyptian god, (Horus?), etc. Unfortunately the building now seems to be the Westin Hotel, no longer a government building.

There were other mysterious objects too! An entire front yard filled with blades. An airplane hanging from the ceiling! And Brother Lyndbergh holding a propeller but it was obviously meant to be the hammer and sickle.

Unfortunately, we missed out on the scary horse sculture whose eyes shine devily red against the sunset.

Costs

There was one mishap. With our Southwest credit card, I had used up all the upgraded boarding credits for the previous anniversary year. I thought we were in the new anniversary year because we had received the Southwest Performance Business credit card around April 16th, 2024. So I thought, “Oh, it’s been a year, now we get the new year’s credit.” I checked through chatgpt as well. ChatGPT was very confident it’s based on the anniversary date, stating that since our anniversary date was April 16th, starting April 18th, we’d get the new year’s statement credits.

But Southwest didn’t credit them. We learned that it’s actually based on the day the annual fee posts. So, we spent $150 on upgraded boardings that weren’t refunded. That was a bit of a loss.

All in all, we kept the budget at around $600, a little bit more than what we budgeted. It was a nice little trip.

Cost	Description
$20 + 7k points	Flight ONT-DEN Southwest + WGA+ Same-Day Change
$150	Hyatt Regency Austin 2n
$200	Food
$50	Ground Transport
$50	Ontario Airport Parking
$150	Mistake with Southwest Upgraded Boarding Credits

Christine got sick after the trip; for two weeks, she was coughing all day, especially in the evenings.