June 15, 2014 9:21pm
It was a gorgeous day. First of all the landscape kept being amazing the whole way. We kept running from window to window and trying to make good photos. Reading didn't go today at all.
As I said before we didn't plan to eat in the dining car and prepared the meals for the trip. But today we decided to have something warm for a dinner. It works here the following way. There are sleeping cars and the meals are included for those passengers. So, they first have to feed them. Then they go through the coach cars and take reservations from passengers here. The quantity is limited, so it might happen that there won't be place/food for everyone. And you cannot book it beforehand, you have to wait for them. We got very lucky and got almost the last place for a dinner at 5.30pm. Which was basically a little bit too early, but firstly there were no other options, and secondly there was a "long" 30 minutes stop planned in Denver which we wanted to use, because we were already tired of sitting and wanted to get some fresh air.
Our dinner table we shared with a nice aged couple from North Carolina. We had a pleasant time with them and suddenly noticed that the train was already in Denver, about 30 minutes before schedule. We finished our meal quickly and hurried up outside glad we would have much time than we expected (obviously train wouldn't depart the schedule). So we went outside as we were and first of all came up to a train employee to inquire at what time should we be back. And here he told us that actually there was another train that we had to wait for to pick up some cars from it and that one was at least 1 hour late!!! But it was kind of not official information and he recommended us to ask at the station. So we went there and found an announcement there indeed, that the train 5, which is California Zephyr in the opposite direction, was only going to arrive at 7.40 and the lady at the counter confirmed that our train number 6 won't departure before we get the cars from number 6. So, suddenly we found ourselves in Denver with at least 1 hour time. We decided not to waste time and went to the city as we were. And we were almost in pajamas, just in some simple home clothes that you were on the train.
We didn't go far, just took the closest nice street from the train station and back. It was full of people, some of them dressed like for a carnival, street musicians, velo rikshas, horse carriages. There were also lots of nice restaurants and cafes, sculptures, interesting buildings. We really liked it there.
After one hour we went back to the train station to check the status and found out that we had at least 1.5 hours more. This time we headed to the next park. It was the beautiful small park on the river bank, people were walking there, with kids and dogs. There was also kind of stage where a group of people looking like hippies or street artists gathered and showed their arts. They played drums and it was really pleasant to be there. So we stayed there until dark and went back to the train. Now we are here and they are telling that we probably won't departure next almost 2 hours. In total we're going to be about 6 hours late to Chicago. Which is a pity, cause we planned to visit a free concert in the park tomorrow evening and now it won't be possible anymore. But we are glad we got to see a little bit of Denver.
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