Ye Olde Renaissance Festival

Every year Denverites gather for the Colorado Renaissance Festival in nearby Larkspur, CO to eat, drink, and make merry.  This being our first festival, it was hard to take everything in at once, so we arrived early before the opening at 10am and spent over five hours wandering around.  This weekend also happened to be the Celtic Festival, and so there were Scottish and Irish themes throughout.

Based on advice from my coworkers, we arrived about 30 minutes before the opening time in order to ensure a parking spot.  Even so, we were still in a pretty long line of cars when we arrived, and there were already lines of people buying tickets and waiting to get in, but we were through the gates promptly at opening.

The Royal Welcome to the Festival

 For those of you from Calgary, the Renaissance Fair reminded me a lot of the Calgary Stampede mashed together with Heritage Park.  This is not a temporary fair that is taken down every summer, but rather a permanent village complete with shops, restaurants, vendors, and entertainers.  The most charming part of the entire visit was that each and every person remains fully in character, which adds to the experience.  Don't think that the costumes and merriment are just limited to just the staff either, since the majority of visitors are also in thematic dress.

No fair is complete without a few snacks, and so in ye olde fashion, I of course had a traditional turkey drumstick, while ScaryMsMary has a Sausage on a Stick.  We also had a Root Beer Float, an Orange Italian Ice (on half a frozen orange), a Raspberry Slushie, and Crab Cakes.

Turkey Leg (Original Condition)

Turkey Leg (A few seconds later)

All in all, the festival was a very enjoyable way to spend the day, other than the heat (around 100° F or 38° C).  ScaryMsMary of course could not end the day without purchasing something from the local artisans, and throwing a few axes.

He looks scared, doesn't he ?

For the grand finale, we arrived at the jousting grounds to watch four knights partake in a contest of honor, strength of arms, and bloodshed.  Considering that our section was instructed to chant "Cheat to Win!" I assume that most of the fighting was scripted, but still enjoyable.  I, for one, am looking forward to next year's event.  Hopefully it won't be quite so hot outside next time.

The Asian Cajun

We have an informal dining club at work and a few of us go out to eat on Sundays.  The idea is to try out some of the local flavor as a team with diverse dietary desires.  Amongst others, we have a Hindu who doesn't eat beef, a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat, and myself who doesn't not eat meat.  For variety, each of us decides on a restaurant to try every week, and the selection rotates among our roster.  This week was my choice and I decided to take the team to The Asian Cajun.  (2400 W Alameda Ave Denver, CO / 303-922-0699)

Although it seems like an odd combination, this restaurant combines an Asian menu (primarily Vietnamese) with a Cajun menu quite successfully.  Our dinner tonight consisted of a variety of choices, including fried alligator, calamari, Cajun fries, baby clams in a garlic butter sauce, crawfish in traditional cajun seasoning, pho dac biet (beef noodle soup), and bo luc lac (seared diced steak).

Trust me, you will need those paper towels.

The seafood is actually sealed in a plastic bag along with your choice of seasoning, and the whole bag is boiled.  This allows the seafood to cook without diluting the flavor, which leads to very savory sacks of sea creatures.

A sack of clams in garlic butter with Cajun Seasoning

A helpless invertebrate about to be devoured.

Fried fries, fried calamari, and fried alligator

Overall, I think that the Asian Cajun has a very unique combination of very strong flavors that seem like an odd combination until you try it for yourself.  ScaryMsMary on the other hand thought that everything was a little over-seasoned, and the spice on the crawfish left her mouth burning through the entire meal.

Tongzilla binary rating:

ONE

Tongzilla description:

Savory sacks of sea creatures

Bike Trip

Just wanted to share a few pictures from today's bike trip.  A few weeks ago we bought a Schwinn Meridian Adult Tricycle from Walmart so that my wife could go grocery shopping and run some quick errands without the car.  Today we decided it would be a good idea to venture out into the scorching wasteland and ride over to our local library without really knowing how to get there via bike paths.  Fortunately, we only got lost in a neighborhood of multimillion dollar homes and made the round trip in about an hour with frequent stops.

Oddly enough, my office is pretty much right on the way from our apartment and the library, so we stopped there for a quick break.  There are some statues in the courtyard by my building as well, so I snapped a few pictures of the majestic trike in its natural habitat.

 

ScaryMsMary's grocery getting chariot of doom

Tongzilla's office of doom

The local library of uh... doom.

A Chimera.  I have no idea why.

Still majestic.

A Trip to Boulder, CO

This weekend we took a quick road trip out to Boulder, CO.  This small city is about an hour away from our apartment, and the primary attraction for us is the Pearl Street Mall.  This pedestrian street is home to a variety of interesting shops and restaurants, and offers a pleasant place to wander and explore.

We started off with a quick lunch at Centro Latin Kitchen and tried the Pork Belly Avocado Salsa and the Shrimp Tacos.  Both were quite tasty, although I found the salsa was quite chunky and therefore somewhat hard to eat on the smallish chips.  The rice served with Shrimp Tacos was lightly seasoned, but lacked flavor when eaten in conjunction with the rest of the meal.

Pork belly avocado salsa with charred Anaheim chiles

Griddled shrimp, garlic mojo, and jalapeño aioli taco

After lunch, we continued on to check out some of the boutiques along the street.  We spent most of our time at the kitchen store Peppercorn and the historic Boulder Book Store, but there were a number of very interesting shops along the way.

Hanging plants at the West End Gardener

Antique typewriter at 8th and Pearl Antiques

One of the many street entertainers along Pearl Street

Finally, we had dinner at The Kitchen, which was recently nominated as number 14 on 5280's 25 Best Restaurants of 2011.  Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera in to take pictures of the meal, and it was a little too dim for the iPhone to take anything reasonable.  That being said, the food was fantastic, and my wife has named it as the best food that she has had in Denver so far.  Most of the appeal comes from the fact that their ingredients are sourced from local farmers, and their menu appears to change every day based on those ingredients.  The only real complaint was that there was a 45 minute wait to get into the restaurant and once inside the food came out quite slowly, but I can honestly say that the food was worth the wait.  We started with the mussels, which were extremely tender and came in a delicious broth.  It was hard to decide if my wife's Lamb or my Porkchop was better, but both were extremely well prepared with excellent flavor.

Hopefully on our next trip we can try out Frasca, which was rated number 1 on the list, as well as check out the Boulder Farmer's Market.

Our Travels in the USA

Since our move to the US, there have been a few good opportunities to travel to US cities.  Travel is much cheaper within the country than flying from Calgary, and we hope to take advantage of that soon.

In the meanwhile, here are some photos taken of our recent trips this year.  (All pictures in this post were taken on my iPhone 4s using Instagram)

San Francisco, CA
 
Since both of our maternal grandmothers live here, the missus and I have had ample opportunity to visit the City by the Bay.  Other than the obvious family ties, we enjoy our trips to San Francisco because it is home to some of the best variety of food.  On this particular trip, we visited the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market and took in some of the local flavor for breakfast.  Most of the photos that I took were around the area, and unfortunately I think I was too busy eating food to take any pictures of the actual marketplace.

A rocket on Embarcadero .  Apparently local to Earth

The Ferry Building clock tower

Vaillancourt Fountain (aka Québec Libre)

The lobby atrium of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco

Sante Fe, NM 

Our first road trip from Denver was to nearby Sante Fe based on recommendations from some of the folks in the office.  The drive itself was about 6-7 hours if you take the I-25 all the way south.  The city of Sante Fe feels almost like a different country if you take into account the architecture and cultural feel.  We greatly enjoyed the laid back attitude and interesting stores lining the streets around the Sante Fe Plaza.  Also highly recommended are the art galleries lining Canyon Road.  My wife primarily enjoyed the side trip to Albuquerque, NM to visit Rio Grande, which is apparently the Mecca of jewelry supply stores.

St. Francis Cathedral Basilica

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

WORSHIP ME PUNY MORTAL !

An example of the unique Sante Fe architecture

An interesting moving sculpture on Canyon Road

St. Pete Beach, FL 

This was a business trip and unfortunately the wife was not able to join me.  I attended a convention at the Tradewinds Island Grand Resort for two days only, so I was not able to spend much time exploring.  I did end up eating at Crabby Bill's down the street and enjoyed the Steamer Bucket and Southern Swamp Water Special.

Pre-devoured Steamer Bucket from Crabby Bill's

Typical sunset on the beach

A very pink Loews Don CeSar Hotel

The vicious toothless shark at the Tradewinds Resort

 Our future plans include trips to New York City and Hawaii in the near future, so I can promise that there will be more pictures to be added.

And so, a new adventure begins...

So for some reason I never really got around to starting a blog.  Now that my beloved life-organizer (love you honey!) and I are in a new country, I figured that it would be about the right time to start sharing our experiences in this new and frightening world called "America."

For those of you who are not aware, my wife and I recently moved from Calgary, Canada to Denver, USA in the year 2012 AD.  Although the reasons behind such a move were somewhat diverse, they revolved mainly around a few simple thoughts:

• My wife hates being cold.  Seeing as her body temperature generally ranges between "sub-zero" and "glacial" the chilly winter weather in Calgary tended to cause untold suffering and misery (and I am not specifying for whom).  Denver winters are somewhat milder, and summers are blistering hot, at least from my perspective.  The days that I describe as "OMGMYHAIRISONFIRE" my wife tends to refer to as "adequate." 
• My wife enjoys her free time.  She has many creative hobbies which tended to directly conflict with the time she spent in the office working.  She is currently focusing primarily on jewelry design, although past dalliances included cake decorating, dress making, stained glass er... fabricating, and interior decorating.
• I was offered an interesting new opportunity.  Obviously we needed a method to finance a move to a new city, and the fates were kind enough to grant me a job offer at a communications company headquartered in Denver.

Hence, our new story begins in a new city and new country.  I freely admit that the culture in Denver isn't a huge change from Calgary, but there are enough differences to make it interesting.  Both cities are in close proximity to the Rocky Mountains, have four distinct seasons, and are essentially economic hubs which attract a zombie-like hoard of job seekers from elsewhere in the country.  They tend to differ primarily in cultural diversity (I really miss having a Chinatown), daily temperature, and business diversity (Calgary is 99% dependent on the oil/gas industry, while Denver tends to have more tech/communications companies).

In any case, I hope to add some pictures and document some of our adventures in this blog so that we can share our experiences with our family and friends.

Henceforth, the world shall shudder as I unleash the horror that is my mind upon it.