Mind-blowing Boulder, Colorado

10/29/25

Wow.

Boulder had been on my list of cities to visit for close to 20 years.

I finally made it there, and I had one of the most perfect experiences of a city in my life.

The weather was perfect. (Not before nor after my time there! But consistently during it. Warm and sunny.)

The people were amazing. I stayed with two Servas couples (shoutout to Leslie & Sam and Erin & Eric!) and also met up with a Servas “day host” (shoutout to Alan!) all of whom were incredibly warm and welcoming. In fact, Erin and Eric hosted an impromptu dinner party the night I arrived, and invited Leslie and Sam, my previous hosts, whom they had not met. We all had a wonderful time and great conversation, and one of the other dinner guests is now seriously considering joining Servas.

Also, Alan is now in the process of organizing a local Boulder-area Servas hosts meetup! I love to see all this networking, and I love that I got to be a part of it by raving to each host(s) about the others. I hope that Servas hosts/members in other cities can also find ways to get together amongst each other. They are always such interesting people, but often meet only the guests they host, and/or the hosts they stay with as guests in other locations.

By the way, if you are reading this, and enjoy either hosting travelers and/or staying with local hosts when you travel, I highly encourage you to consider joining Servas. You can read more about it at the link, but it is an international peace-and-justice nonprofit founded in Europe in 1949, in the wake of WWII, with the explicit mission of helping people to get to know each other—especially across international borders—with the goal of preventing future wars. The joining process includes an application, letters of reference, and an in-person interview, and yearly dues of $33 (US—I assume it is comparable in other countries). The hosts I have met have been consistently warm, passionate about life, interesting and fun to talk with, and well traveled.

Another thing I loved about Boulder was its bike-friendliness! Of course Portland is also well known for that, but the way the two cities approach it is different. Much of Portland’s bicycle infrastructure consists of bike lanes along streets and roads. In Boulder, almost all of it is on wide, usually paved, car-free paths. One can get almost anywhere in town by bike within about 20 minutes, and with very minimal interaction with auto traffic. Like Denver, there were many scenic creekside underpasses, which always delighted me with the sunlight and splendor of nature’s color on the far side as I rode through.

And in general, the scenery in Boulder took my breath away. I missed the aspens (too late in the season) but yellow trees were everywhere, both in town and on the couple of excursions I took on the edges of town.

I’ll walk you through the photos:

The cover photo is one of the most dramatic pics from the day I was stopped on my bike in a park, looking at the map on my phone to decide where to go, when a cyclist who introduced himself as Leslie pulled up and said, “Oh, a Brompton!” (This would become quite a theme. Not only does Leslie’s wife own a Brompton, but so does my Servas day host Alan—pic to follow later in this blog! And when Alan and I met up for our bike ride at a coffee shop, another Brompton rider happened to pull up at just that moment. Later, after that ride, as I was heading back to Erin and Eric’s place, a man rolled by me on the bike path next to the creek, pedaling a pedicab with two elderly ladies in front as passengers. When he rolled by my bike, he paused and asked, “Is that a Brompton?” Turns out he has one too. The funniest/most interesting part was, each time I talked about the bike with one of these various folks, they claimed they rarely if ever see Bromptons in Boulder!)

Anyway, when Leslie found me in the park, we got to talking. First, he suggested I someday visit Reston, Virginia, where he grew up, since it was a planned city and he said the bike paths there are many and beautiful, winding through lots of wooded areas. Some of you will know—although of course he did not until I told him—that I also grew up near Reston (that’s where my orthodontist was) and I will be visiting the area within a few weeks! In fact, the niece of my friend Ron, with whom I had lunch in Denver, is my “Portland” friend Michelle, who now lives in Reston! I’m looking forward to seeing her when I’m in the area… and now I know to also factor in some time to ride the bike paths! (Last time I did so was in 2019, when I biked through Reston on the 45-mile Washington & Old Dominion [W&OD] bike path, also with Michelle’s help—read that blog post if you want to hear about more amazing serendipities!)

Leslie then suggested that I explore a particular bike path on the southern edge of Boulder. He started explaining how I could get there, but although I tried to be polite, smiling and nodding, inwardly my eyes were glazing over because I knew I’d never be able to remember his instructions. We kept talking, though, and finally he said, “Why don’t I just lead you there? It’s not far from where I’m going. Follow me!”

That was one of the early indicators of Boulder magic. He biked me for about five or ten minutes—thankfully, because indeed, I would not have figured out that route on my own—and dropped me off at the start of a well-graded gravel path that snaked a few miles through stunning grassland, with lovely turning trees along the creek and the ubiquitous yet breathtaking mountains in the backdrop.

The next few photos are from my initial ride from the bus stop in downtown Boulder to Leslie and Sam’s house on the east edge of town. I could hardly believe my eyes as I pedaled in that afternoon light. (Oh, and it is worth mentioning that the bus from Denver to Boulder—a comfortable coach with plenty of room underneath for my rig, and a driver willing to help me load and unload it—cost only $2.75 each way! The one-way ride was nearly an hour. A similar journey from Portland to Salem, via a similar bus provided by Amtrak, costs me $10 each way.)

The next few photos depict some of the sights I saw in town. The first was the Dushanbe Teahouse. I’ll let the photo and hyperlink fill you in on the amazing details if you’re curious, but it is a beautiful landmark in downtown Boulder, gifted to the city by people in their sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. There at the teahouse, I met up with Elizabeth, a local friend of my Portland friend Cheri, and we had a deep and delightful conversation (an in-person magical meeting!) as we enjoyed our meal at an outdoor table next to the creek.

I took the next photo on the campus of the University of Colorado Boulder (“CU”) right in the center of town. What an absolutely gorgeous campus. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I found this peaceful bench on which to rest and gaze upon this bridge and reflection.

Next up is a fun one: the Mork and Mindy house! It is listed on Google Maps as a landmark, so I decided to swing by and see it. I hadn’t remembered the house looking like that on the series, but when I checked the credits on YouTube, sure enough, that was it!

At another point, I visited the local cat café, Purrfect Pause! They have adopted out more than 600 cats since their founding in May 2022, and the café has capacity for up to 20 cats at a time. There were ten when I arrived, and I enjoyed meeting and interacting with all of them. In the interest of limiting the flood of photos in this post, I am keeping it to two, showing four cats, but you can trust that all the others were equally adorable.

When I met up with Alan at the coffee shop on the pedestrian Pearl Street Mall, he took me for a beautiful ride into the Boulder Canyon Trail, on the west edge of town. We stopped short of scaling the peak, but the scenery along the trail was incredible.

The next couple of photos are from local parks where I walked or biked; I loved the early-day sun on the uphill one, and the late-day light on the other.

In closing, I wanted to share two photos from a sunset excursion Leslie generously insisted on taking me to—by car, thankfully, because, oof, what an elevation!—a spectacular viewpoint called Lost Gulch Lookout. It was the perfect way to close out my incredibly perfect experience of a new city.

If you ever get a chance to go to Boulder, do it!  

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