Beauty Colorado Hotels & Lodging Skiing & Snowboarding Spas Telluride The Rockies: Beauty Colorado Hotels & Lodging Skiing & Snowboarding Spas Telluride The Rockies
by maribeth
Comments Off on Pick a Spa, Pick a Ski Destination
Pick a Spa, Pick a Ski Destination
Outdoor Pool at The Peaks Resort & Spa
You’re missing out on a good chunk of fun and relaxation if you think your whole mountain experience has to be all about hitting the slopes. Sure, there’s nothing like spending day after day in the fresh air, carving perfect turns on buttery snow or picking through exquisite, diamond-shaped moguls. Yet even the most die-hard skiers and boarders need a day off. Or maybe just a half day. Or how about a couple days off? It’s supposed to be a vacation after all. You don’t want to feel like you need a vacation after your vacation, do you? How about après-ski—don’t those moments represent some of the best of your whole ski vacation? Those delicious hours of the day don’t have to be all about drinks at the bar.
Colorado Denver Fashion & Style Hotels & Lodging Restaurants Shopping The Rockies: Colorado Denver Fashion & Style Hotels & Lodging Restaurants Shopping The Rockies
by maribeth
Comments Off on Cherry Creek: One of America’s Top Spots for Chic Shopping, Lodging and Dining
Cherry Creek: One of America’s Top Spots for Chic Shopping, Lodging and Dining
City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks, Dressed in Holiday Style. It’s Christmastime in the Mile-High City.
Where are you shopping this weekend? With only two weeks left until Christmas, I’d say there’s a good chance you might find yourself in a store. Many Americans will be hitting the mall, a dreaded chore for some unless you’re lucky enough to experience the Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver, one of the world’s premier showcases for quality goods from sunglasses to kitchen accessories to classic and up-to-the-minute fashions. Think Tysons Corner and Bal Harbour Shops—if you’ve been to either of these renowned shopping areas you have a good idea of what to expect at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. From Burberry to Juicy Couture to Montblanc to Keihl’s and many more, the finest American and European brands reign here in great force. Macy’s, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus anchor this alluring complex where even during this busy retail season, shopping is a delight. You’ll also find an Apple store among the mall’s 160 retailers, reason alone to hit this celebrated shopping place in Denver. Their jewel-like Ice Palace where Santa Claus holds court distinguishes itself by having a Santa that signs to deaf and hearing impaired children. Indeed, this is not your ordinary mall.
I suggest you plan to spend at least a couple of days in this most gentrified part of Denver. You’ll also want to take in Cherry Creek North, a lively shopping district next to the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, comprised of over three hundred upscale boutiques, galleries, restaurants, salons and spas within a sixteen-block area. I love the leisurely feel of this area where you can shop at big and small emporiums such as Crate and Barrel, Eileen Fischer, Loro Piana, Lands’ End and many more. Why, there’s even an Hermès.
Colorado Hotels & Lodging Restaurants The Rockies: Colorado Hotels & Lodging Restaurants The Rockies
by maribeth
Comments Off on Hotel Boulderado: A Beautiful Destination for the Holidays and All Year Long
Hotel Boulderado: A Beautiful Destination for the Holidays and All Year Long
Christmas at Hotel Boulderado: A Grand Coloradan Tradition
Well, it’s here. Now that I have my turkey carcass boiling on the stove I feel comfortable embracing the holiday season. (I’m not one to rush things—I like each season to be experienced fully before approaching the next.) But now the countdown is on and it’s up to us not to let ourselves get all crazy with the cooking, decorating, celebrating and oh yes, the shopping.
I try to be like the French and adhere to quality, not quantity. I apply that to everything from what I consume to where I choose to spend my time. So let me suggest you buy less but do it in a more memorable manner. That applies to eating as well and even how and where you spend time away from home.
Relishing a moment—whether it’s a few hours or a few days—at Hotel Boulderado, one of Colorado’s most historic properties, will surely make your holidays special. Call it Christmas central. Festooned with holiday decorations from its stained glass ceiling to its tile floor and all around its hand-carved wooden railings, this more-than one-hundred year-old landmark becomes even more splendiferous at this time of year. This glittering Victorian gem draws people from all over and to me, I can think of no other Coloradan establishment that exudes as much charm as the Boulderado during this festive season.
Colorado Denver Hotels & Lodging: Colorado Denver Hotels & Lodging
by maribeth
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Hotel Happiness in Denver
TownePlaza Suites Denver Downtown
Looking for a fun, convenient and affordable place to stay in downtown Denver? Check out Marriot’s TownePlace Suites Denver Downtown, a chain hotel with charm. Of course I was drawn to this property since it occupies the legendary A.B. Hirshfeld Press Building, a handsome structure over a century-old located on Speer Boulevard. Historic photos, modish- colored furnishings and accent pieces dress up this property with style and panache. Everywhere you turn there’s something interesting, fun or joyful to look at or experience. (No dreary breakfast bars here!)
Colorado Hotels & Lodging Mountain Living Shopping Skiing & Snowboarding Telluride: Colorado Hotels & Lodging Mountain Living Shopping Skiing & Snowboarding Telluride
by maribeth
Comments Off on Filling in Nicely in Telluride: Snowstorm After Snowstorm
Filling in Nicely in Telluride: Snowstorm After Snowstorm
Telluride, Colorado
Top of Lift One Taken Yesterday on My Walk: Snow Guns Blazing in Between Storms
Yippee! What a month of November it has been so far—and it’s only the seventh! We’ve had seventeen inches of beautiful white fluff in the past four days and more snow is in the forecast for today and tonight. And then very cold temperatures—as low as single digits Tuesday night. We couldn’t ask for a better set up for a great ski season.
End of October was pretty sweet, too. As I reported in Fall in Colorado: October Snow Arrives with My Woolens and Ski Gear, our weather switched from glorious full-on Indian Summer to Winter and it looks like winter’s here to stay. That’s just the way it’s supposed to be in ski country.
Boy, do I love this place. When people ask me if I miss Paris, I sometimes reply “Have you ever been to Telluride?”
It’s going to be a great season. I’m off to my storage area to pick up my boots and boards.
Art & Culture Colorado Denver Hotels & Lodging Music & Dance Restaurants: Art & Culture Colorado Denver Hotels & Lodging Music & Dance Restaurants
by maribeth
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DCPA, The Lion King, Kevin Taylor and Other Roars About Denver’s Downtown and LoDo
The Lion King
With Halloween behind us, we can focus more on the real holiday season, the nearly two-month period that begins right about now. (You all must know that it has been moved up!) For me, one of the nicest things to do during this festive period is to go out on the town for dinner and a show, a not-too-easy feat from Telluride but certainly closer than New York.
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) makes such a night out worth the effort since they consistently offer a tremendous lineup of shows and performances, all concentrated within a twelve-acre, four-block complex in the heart of downtown Denver. Did you know that DCPA is the second largest arts complex in the country? Their ten performance spaces beautifully accommodate Broadway touring productions, a major symphony and opera, dance and ballet, chorales and a variety of theater groups. They can seat 10,000 people within their theaters, splendid showplaces of varying sizes connected by an eighty-foot-tall glass roof.
And tonight “The Lion King” opens at The Buell Theatre for a five-week run! This dazzling production enjoyed sell-out shows during their 2002 and 2006 engagements in Denver. Tickets are still available for this stint but as expected, they’re going fast. I hope I can take it in since I love great stories, spectacular shows and cats of all kinds.
Art & Culture Colorado Hotels & Lodging Shopping Telluride The Rockies The Southwest Travel: Art & Culture Colorado Hotels & Lodging Shopping Telluride The Rockies The Southwest Travel
by maribeth
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Touring the Southwest with My Parents
A Great Facebook Profile Picture: Dad at the Grand Canyon
Are you familiar with those digital photo frames that display a continuous stream of select images? Well, I was back east in October visiting my parents and brought one of those frames to them as a gift. We had to enlist outside help (thanks Brian) to transfer my images onto the frame (I’m so eighteenth century), but once it started to flash our faces across the screen, we all beamed. My father especially glowed since he was finally able to see himself backdropped by a parade of images from the Grand Canyon and other notable sites in the Southwest. It was like bringing him back to the South Rim of the Canyon to gaze over the vastness and grandeur of what is most certainly our country’s greatest treasure.
We embarked on our two-week Western Jamboree just about a year ago. Fall and even winter are two fantastic seasons for visiting many of our National Parks, especially the Grand Canyon. During these times the wondrous play of light combined with a lack of crowds make these sites even more enchanting. The focal point of our trip was to be the Grand Canyon, a place my father always dreamed of seeing. At the age of eighty-four, we were ready to grant him his wish.
Art & Culture Girl Talk Hotels & Lodging New England Restaurants Shopping Travel: Art & Culture Girl Talk Hotels & Lodging New England Restaurants Shopping Travel
by maribeth
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A Heartwarming Day Trip to Western Massachusetts and the Norman Rockwell Museum
Autumnal Scene in Stockbridge, Massachusetts
I was back east recently visiting my parents in upstate New York. Mom and I had on our agenda a “day out” to ourselves, one just like the old days. To us that meant planning a jaunt to a nearby destination such as the Hudson Valley region, southern Vermont or the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, all scenic and fairly rural destinations within about an hour’s drive of my parents’ house in Troy, New York. These were the places we would travel to throughout the years, especially when I was growing up. Together we would marvel at the pastoral landscapes while chitchatting the day away. Lunch, a bit of shopping and often a museum visit were all key components of a successful day trip, the perfect female bonding experience for two gals living in a house full of men. (I grew up with five brothers, a father and no sisters.)
It was during these joyous excursions that my love for unique places full of personality and charm emerged. I could hardly tolerate department stores or malls when I was a girl and still have a hard time with them today. Yes, these trips to soulful sites full of history and tradition planted the seeds for the shopping service I founded in Paris some years later and the four books I came to write on shopping and touring in Paris and the French provinces. My philosophy is and always will be about the whole shopping and touring experience—it’s not so much about what you buy, it’s about how and where you buy it and what you learn along the way. Truth is, I’m not even a big advocate of buying, but we all do, so why not have it be something special that you’ve procured in a memorable manner?
This special day to ourselves was more challenging to organize since we don’t leave my eighty-five-year-old Dad alone much any more. With a hearty, microwavable meal prepared in advance at the ready, cell phones listed in plain site and the reassurance that his Life-Alert was in working order, we said “Hasta la Vista,” knowing full well that we’d all appreciate the much-needed time away from each other.
