zoo and fondue

This weekend my Aunt Micky was in town visiting. She's considering moving out here once Alex (her youngest) goes off to college in a couple months. Micky is my stepdad John's sister, but we won't hold that against her. Actually his entire family is pretty fantastic. Anyways, since she was in town, I figured it would be as good a time as any to see the sights in Denver. Sure, there is a lot to do in Boulder, but not really so much for someone who doesn't drink or hike or bike or have much interest in seeing beautiful mountain views (she had visited a friend in another part of Colorado before getting here and had seen a lot of mountain scenery). So even though she expected us to show her around, we ended up learning Denver together. Micky, Heather and I headed out on Friday (after lunching at the Dushanbe Teahouse---oh my god that place is a whole other post altogether. Great food.) to see the sights. We ended up on a street called 16th Street Mall, which is exactly what it sounds like. These Coloradans love their outdoor malls. It was pretty nice and just a general happy atmosphere. We stopped in a visitor's center and found a Black Hole exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, so we hopped a bus and headed that way.
The exhibit turned out to be a short film on a "planetarium" screen. Now I don't know about you, but no planetarium I'd ever been to looked anything like this. Imagine a giant Imax screen in the shape of a bowl hovering over your head discussing black holes, quantum physics and super novas. It was intense, but I loved it. I'm a big fan of Imax and this was 10 times better. There were times when I had to close my eyes just to stay sane.
After that, we walked through an adjacent park to get back home. It was really quite a beautiful park...it kind of reminded me of Piedmont Park in some ways. There were geese everywhere and also some gorgeous white birds that looked a lot like cranes, but I'm not positive.
I got a shot of one in this tree, but I'm not sure how well it'll turn out. Its kinda hard to see.
There were also some rare birds only found in Colorado. Man I love paddle boats.
Later that night, the boys came up from Boulder and had dinner (they had been working all day but Heather and I had Friday off).
I found a fondue place, which is usually too pricey for me but this one had a summer special going, so it was perfect. The guys met us there and we had a really nice dinner together. The next day, we headed out to the zoo. I'm a pretty big fan of zoos and for completely selfish reasons. I'm sure people get up-in-arms about the cruelty to animals and keeping them in captivity, etc. but I just love to see the animals. It's one of my favorite things to do; just walk around and stare at animals all day. I do it at home, too. This zoo was pretty decent. They had a couple animals I don't believe I've ever seen in real life before, like an ostrich and a musk ox. Unfortunately, we had to rush through it because my "company picnic" was at 4 and we didn't get there until 1:30 (we had to leave at 3 to make it back to Boulder). So we kind of scrimped on the monkeys and the birds (as well as some rhinos, some penguins and some mountain goats). Although Eric and I were both heartbroken (he was really excited about the musk ox), we knew we'd make it back there eventually. It is only 30 minutes away from where we live.
Denver seems to be an okay town, although I must say at this point, I still don't think I've seen a true sampling of what it has to offer. Every place I've mentioned that we've been to (and even places we'd been to before this post) was within about 4 square miles, if that. If Denver is anything like Atlanta, there is loads more for us to experience around the corner.