built of fieldstone with a round stone tower; it's been a Victorian home and a processing center for parolees, and several other things. The interior is meticulously restored to its fussy Victorian greatness (that's a compliment, I like Victorian houses). See more photos here. They had the most delightful tea cozy I've ever seen:
The food was excellent, I really liked the staff, and it was a wonderful alternative to the corporate hotel (and it may even be cheaper, depending on the corporate hotel). The weather was mostly nice, overcast but cool; we had one day that was overcast but 101 degrees!
Our first major excursion was an afternoon at the Denver Botanic Garden. We didn't realize til we got there that they were having an exhibit of Henry Moore sculpture. This meant that the gorgeous gardens were punctuated with huge abstract stone shapes:
I can never resist gardens, so I took quite a few photos, you'll find the rest here. Take a look and rest your eyes. I was especially pleased by the black-crowned night heron who posed for me in the Japanese garden:
For the life of me, I can't remember a time in my life when Henry Moore's sculptures weren't supposed to be just the greatest things. But I can remember, that at some point--perhaps in my early thirties, I decided his work was just plain dull.
ReplyDeleteHerb Cain used to have a funny phrase to describe the brass coated monstrosity which sits in front of Davies Hall in San Francisco. Something like the magnificent twisted turd.
Gardens. Wow. A whole world and then some. If you start visiting all the interesting gardens in the world, it would take three lifetimes. I like really tiny ones (like the Berkeley Rose Garden), and great big ones (the kind you can get lost in).
Herb Caen's comments sometimes ran to the scatological. I think he was the one who said that the Vaillancourt Fountain at Embarcadero Plaza looked like the deposit of a cement dog with square intestines.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Henry Moore's sculptures are overrated. However, they made a somewhat pleasing contrast to the rest of the gardens. The Denver Bot Garden is on the large size but I'm not sure you could really get lost there. My husband being a gardening follower of Gertrude Jeckyll, we tour a lot of gardens when we travel; you should look at our tours of England in 2007 on my web site, www.karenivy.net.