Boulder, Colorado

That afternoon we took a short nap, then I found husband relaxing on the balcony with a chilled bottle of champagne. The sun was beaming, and even in a tank top I was actually…dare I say, hot?

We finally emerged from the room and went in search of bikes to rent. We love the program offered in Boulder. You can check out a bike then return it at any other location. Your first hour is free, then there is a small fee after that. With multiple locations all over town it is SO easy to get around.

We had reservations at Brasserie Ten Ten, but not for a couple of hours, so we moseyed through the mall.

There are so many great (although mostly very expensive) shops along Pearle Street. We drooled over this and that and then made our way to the restaurant. 

The last time we ate here we shared the truffle fries, the lemon ricotta gnocchi, and the duck confit and housemade chicken sausage. It was simply divine. I’m not kidding. Possibly the best meal we’ve ever eaten. We were open to trying a few new things, but ultimately stuck with the duck and sausage, and added in steak tartare (with a quail egg come on!), and the muscles (I’m slowly warming husband up to them). 

I often find myself having a hard time coming up with words to describe really good food. Most of the time, if a meal has made that big of an impression on me (or us) it’s nearly impossible for me to convey. This was definitely one of those times. So often these days we are so underwhelmed when we eat out. Either we cook better, and better quality food at home, or in general we are disappointed with the lackluster flavor, small portions, poor presentation, or sky high sodium levels that leave us dehydrated for hours (seriously, why do restaurants use SO much salt??). 

None of that is a concern here. Every single bite was perfect. The kind of perfect that you can’t help but stop, put your fork down, and try to chew as slowly as possible because you want each and every bite to last forever. 

Husband has now mandated that we only eat there when we visit Boulder. Normally I would be inclined to disagree, as I tend towards the belief that there aren’t enough days in life to experience all the wonderful restaurants there are in the world, but I just may agree with him on this one. 

We drank lots of wine, did lots of talking, and slept wonderfully. Which ended up being a good thing as come the next day on our trip home, we were once again hit by a snowstorm in Wyoming. I’ve come to fear that gnarly stretch. Every single time we have come through there we get caught in a storm. And this time we were in my car which doesn’t even do well in rain. We both gripped the steering wheel and door handles with white knuckles as we forged on through the already slush covered road. The wind wasn’t helping, an at one point we were just praying we could make it the 25 miles to the tiny town of Lusk to seek safely and shelter. Where we were there was no cell signal and no houses around to find help if we were to get stranded. Talk about stressful. 

Thankfully we trudged along until we made it to Lusk, and the further we got towards Rapid the more the snow turned to rain. I’ve never been so glad to get home. 

When we moved here I fully anticipated making a lot of trips to Colorado, but honestly I’m pretty terrified of the snowstorms in Wyoming. For the most part we generally write off that kind of trip throughout the Winter months, but we just couldn’t help ourselves this year. We have plans to go to Winter Park for Thanksgiving. Wish us luck that the snow will hold off so we can get there and get home!