Mile-high city

The Colorado State Capitol Building has been well preserved.

Denver is one of the cities you might not visit unless it was on your way to somewhere, most probably Colorado's famous skifields. Yet it's almost the size of Sydney and has amenities and attractions to match.

It bills itself as the Mile-High (1600m) City, and it's certainly a good place to acclimatise to the 3000m-plus altitude of the skifields. I visited in late March and was pleasantly surprised by the mild weather. However, it got chilly in the evening and a few years ago it experienced a city-stopping snowstorm in March.

Summers in Denver are pleasant thanks to its altitude, but with more than 300 days a year of sunshine, whatever season you visit should be reasonably sunny.

Denver plays up its mining origins, and the culture is rather cowboyish, from the shops to the bars. But most of the city's growth has been recent, so much of the architecture is modern and much of the city is a classic American wasteland.

Like most US cities, it boasts a host of biggest and bests. It's the nation's baby-boomer capital, with the thinnest, best-educated people.

The city authorities have tried to preserve the older buildings and claim the nation's best collection of Victorian buildings. Many of the original warehouses have been converted into attractive loft apartments.

An excellent free bus service operates every 90 seconds downtown along 16th St, where a 1.6km-long, car-free mall was built in 1982 by architect I.M. Pei, who also designed Paris' Pyramid du Louvre.

It doesn't have the bustle of New York or San Francisco, but downtown has a pleasant ambience, with plenty of ethnic restaurants, micro-brewery style pubs, galleries and quirky shops.

Larimer Square, the heart of the restored Victorian sector, cuts 16th St.

You don't associate the West with reading, but the Tattered Cover is the best bookshop I have ever visited.

The converted warehouse has sections for every genre imaginable on its four floors, each laid out like a comfy study. It's a must-visit and by itself made my trip to Denver worthwhile.

The city has a host of large museums, including the Black American West Museum, and the Children's Museum of Denver, which features a host of interactive displays.

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is at least as large as Te Papa, and on the day I visited even more crowded with hordes attending the anatomical Body Worlds show.

Denver is the home to seven professional sports teams and has three stadiums, offering plenty for those wanting to taste American sport.

Beer drinkers can enjoy free tours of Anheuser-Buschs brewery, brewer of Budweiser, or the rival Coors Brewery.

Family attractions include theme parks, an aquarium, a water world, a large butterfly and insect zoo and the Denver Zoo, the fourth-largest in the US.

On the cultural front, the Denver Performing Arts Complex claims to be the largest in the world.

The Denver Art Museum, with a spectacular new wing designed by Daniel Libeskind, architect of the World Trade Centre redesign project, is just a couple of blocks away.

If you time it right, you can take in a concert at Red Rocks, an amphitheatre carved out of 150m red sandstone cliffs about an hour out of town. Everyone from the Beatles to the Black Crowes has performed there.

Shopaholics are advised to take their credit cards to Cherry Creek, where you can find every brand store known among its 160 shops.

Eating in Denver, like elsewhere in the US is a mixed bag - from the indescribably bad Ship Rock Grill where I had inedible rattlesnake empanadas, to the excellent, but pricey, Rioja (Mediterranean fusion).

Good value was My Big Brother's Bar, a classic Western-style bar and cheap and cheerful restaurant serving hamburger and chips on paper.

Like the rest of Denver, it gives you a taste of the West, as it was and the modernised version.

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