#AshLaurenUSA: First leg Denver

I would never have imagined that I would have had the chance to travel to Denver, Colorado. For an Australian looking at travelling to America (it's a long way to travel, with LA being a 14 hour flight and not into skiing like myslef) you tend to look at Hawaii, New York, California before you would think Colorado. But Denver, you certainly did surprise me with your food, scenery, coffee, sports and people.

Food:

Well, you can see most of my food experiences, via the hashtag #AshBurgerz on Facebook, twitter and Instagram, so I will not bore you too much here and just cover the highlights.

Using my expert knowledge of American eateries (that is watching Man VS Food) I found, well Lauren actually found this great web site which had all the TV shows on the one site, www.tvfoodmaps.com. This was a great way for me to create a list of where to start for my #Ashburgerz adventure, but it wasn't till i started adventuring the city and chatting to the locals that i started finding the hidden gems:

- Tamayo: This is not your traditional Mexican, it is modern Mexican at its finest. I am not going to lie, I had the most amazing Mexican I have ever eaten here. It took me back to my childhood days of eating when the stomach says "full" but the brain says "keep eating, don't stop". This meant grabbing Lauren's half eaten meal, and finishing that off too! Amazing!!!

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Voodoo Doughnuts: Now I think I first saw this place on a Man VS Food episode, but at the time of the show, they were only in Portland. I always wanted to go to this place and when I googled the words "doughnuts" along with "Denver", guess what appeared on my screen? Well yes Voodoo, now located across a few places in USA. As soon as I discovered this I was pretty much straight out the hotel door and following the sweet sweet smell of delicious donuts.


The day before Lauren told me directly "No donuts for me!", knowing I had the green light from Lauren, Voodoo here we come.

The journey to Voodoo was an experiences in itself, walking most of the way, I later discovered I ventured outside the safe zone and into areas where tourists were best not to go. I enjoyed my walk, it was very interesting.

I had two donuts for the day, later when catching up with Lauren, I soon discovered that Voodoo Doughnuts was an exception to the "No donut policy" and so we had more donuts that night.

- Cherry Cricket: Another highlight, so far, for my culinary taste bud tour was this place. Seeing it on Man VS Food and hearing the locals talking on how its traditional American burgers, meant I had to go.

Just have to say, along with the bison burgers at Ted's Montana Grill, had to be one of the best burgers I have had, which went down well with a beer. You could literally make up whatever burger you wanted, which is danger for a person, like myself, who is indecisive. I narrowed it down, then asked the waiter what was the most popular burger ordered, to my surprise it was what I narrowed it down too! So I had a burger with cream cheese and jalapenos, I then added onion rings and some sauce to it.

Like I said, I could go on and on with all the food I have already eaten in the 6 days of being here but to keep this blog at a reasonable size, just go and check out my hashtag which I update (to the annoyance of Lauren) as soon https://www.tedsmontanagrill.com my food is out, #AshBurgerz. Lauren has also been posting too, here.

Scenery:

You cannot beat having the Rockies in your backyard. We took a day trip to the mountains and to see where the famous Buffalo Bill was buried. I will not go on for too long here, let's just say I loved the scenery from the mountains ranges and we had fun at the Buffalo Bill museum where we took some serious pictures (see below).

Coffee:

To my surprise, Denver has some good coffee places.
The best coffee places I went to being Little Owl, Pablo's and Marley Coffee.

While in Denver, we were able to experience and fall in love with ice hockey (well me anyway) and eat a hotdog at the baseball.

My best experience was meeting the locals and chatting to them, like Reaebedbenyah or "Ray" for short. I hope they didn't mind an annoying tourist from down under asking questions like "What's your story?", "Where to get the best coffee?", "What's a good place to visit?" I thank you Denver and the people of Denver for making my experience here one I'll remember for a long time to come.

Well, that's our Denver part. Thank you Denver.

- Also, don't forget to follow our hashtags for the trip #AshLaurenUSA and #AshBurgerz -