Your Best Holiday Yet: Colorado Getaway Update

Nederland, Colorado

"Ned" with snow-capped mountains peeking over...


Wintery "Ned"

After some snowy days, crisp blue skies...

we took this at the road by our "getaway"...

Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, CO on Christmas Eve


The "Flatirons"--Boulder's gorgeous daily backdrop...


snow-dusted...



We love it... it does remind this Miami girl of "Northern Exposure" this time of year!


Barefoot in the snow! Tulips proliferate here on Pearl Street in springtime...


Another Boulder tradition, and the cigar bar serves hot chocolate to the kids
after they skate...

A view from our canyon hideaway...

Mr. Wonderful picked this place out for us for our holiday... our 3rd Christmas.

The steps to our home away from home...

Perfect!

We are in Boulder, Colorado, and we are blissfully, joyfully, happy. The minute we began our descent into Colorado, we saw white-capped mountains, larger than your memory can hold, and pink glowing skies. Mr. Wonderful was even happier than I could remember, so happy to breathe in Colorado air. This 37 year old man was giddy with joy: our journey was just beginning. We boarded the bus, with no wait, from the airport, and road out among the mountains near the Denver airport, and the christmas lights, twinkling blue lights lining the road we both had traveled back and forth so many times, only 18 months earlier. Suddenly we were in the college town of Boulder, on Broadway, as if we had never been away. The Mac Shack…the fraternity houses, the Wild Oats-turned-Whole Foods.

Snow started the minute we arrived in the center of Boulder, and began our journey to the mountain lodge. The flakes thickened, and we walked from the canyon road down toward our home for the next week. The snow fell, over already snow-whitened road and ground, the skies pouring onto our world, something very dreamlike to our tropical sensibilities. As if in our own little snowglobe, we walked, forward into the dark road; the snow fell, illuminating our lodge and the path--the bridge lead us to our holiday hideaway. It seemed we were the only ones for miles; all we could hear was a creek, babbling away against its icy "roof". The snow kept falling all night and the next day,

a gentle coating of cold white beauty.

We had Christmas Eve in Boulder, and Christmas here in the Four Mile Canyon…Mr. W. made me lovely meals for which he had shopped and carried home to us only by bus and backpack…no rental car on this trip! Colorado’s public transportation is too good.

The 26th, we rode up to beautiful Nederland, surrounded by snow covered rocks and canyon walls that seemed to touch the Colorado blue sky. Layers of sunny blue sky froze at ice-coated rock, and the shadows protected snow down to the road.

In Nederland, we saw the frozen lake, and I remembered the first time I saw the expanse of Nederland at sunset--it was something beyond imagination. The glassy dark blue lake, the sky: its purples and pinks blending over the spring green, white-topped mountains. That day changed me…I learned life had beauty that could shock you, and heal you at the same time.

Here is a little background on our love story... enjoy!

More to come…trip in progress!

pic 1: from this awesome album

pic 2 and 3, google images

all the rest are ours from the last few days ;)

The best place to skinny dip under tropical stars...

Having lived in the midwest and East Coast, when I encountered Coral Gables, FL, for the first time ten years ago, I did not know what hit me! Since then I've never been able to get enough of its gorgeous architecture, sweet little details, and tropical bliss. The city was dreamed up by a poet, George Merrick, and called "The City Beautiful."

He envisioned it as the American Riviera, and today people dock boats behind their houses in some sections, and the heady mix of tropical foliage and Mediterranean detail never fail to make me happy. In the hot summer, the Gables seems to take a collective deep breath and simultaneously drink many cold drinks, and skinny dipping in the backyard pools under the stars is the way to go!

I once spent a summer healing my heart in a Gables backyard, when the summer air and the pool water blended together...quite ethereal... Each morning I marveled at the profusion of red hibiscus and the ever greener, greener than green tropical greenery thriving under daily afternoon showers.

If you come, be sure not to miss the Venetian Pool, The Biltmore Hotel, the UM campus, shopping on the Miracle Mile, Books and Books on Aragon Avenue, and a few hours to bike or walk around the streets of the Gables, the Little Gables... such beauty to explore! Wait until we cool off a little... you will love it.