Cross-country flight and arrival in Denver

This trip was planned starting in February, so we were quite happy that it finally came time to board the plane.  Day started out a bit behind, as we sat on tarmac for 30 minutes after boarding for no good reason (at least not in my mind).  Luckily, we had a long enough layover to absorb a delay. I still don't get how a flight from ROA to CLT takes an hour and a half.  But maybe it's because of the 1950's style prop plane instead of a jet.  Note to self - avoid American Airlines in future or just drive to Charlotte and go out from there.

Got to Denver mid afternoon.  Picked up the SilverCar. Sweet and easy process.  Drove down to Lone Tree and decided to get a bite to eat after checking into the Element hotel.

Looked online for places and found Grimaldi's Brick Oven Pizza which was only a few miles away. We did have some trouble finding it because it was right near a mall, so street address wasn't helpful. Anyway, the food was killer.  Got a carafe of wine, a tasty Caprese salad, and then an amazing brick oven pie - it was called the "Brooklyn Bridge" or something like that.  Spicy red sauce, italian sausage and ricotta cheese on a toasty, thin crust.

After dinner, we went over to the mall - Park Meadows.  About the only thing mall-like about this place is that they did have stores and were selling items, but it was the nicest mall we've ever seen. The better term for the place is "Retail Resort".  And I didn't coin that term, even though Susan wanted to give me credit for it - I saw it on a sign. The food court was just plain ridiculous.  You have to mentally combine a fancy Colorado Lodge with stores to understand what this place was.  Really pretty cool and nice, not that I particularly like malls, but this one was cool.  They had a whole store of fancy olive oil type products, which I guess is a thing, but nothing something those of us that live in Blacksburg would know about.

A good start to our trip.  Tiring day, but a good one overall.