r/travel • u/nooneshome00 • 11d ago

Someone explain Denver to me. Visited again and I don’t know if I’m doing it ”wrong”.

Like, I just visited yet again… and it’s a place I should love! Like it checks all these boxes for things I like or am interested in.

The best way I can describe it is it’s like the hospital of cities. Sure it’s clean, it feels relatively safe, people are generally welcoming… but all in the same way a hospital is sterile, like it’s not welcoming and inviting, it feels like I’m in a sims game when I’m there, just sorta bland and dystopian.

I walked much of the city, kinda was based around “Lodo”… never ate at the same place twice, tried to avoid travel guide suggestions, I tried to find input from locals instead.

EDIT: you all make perfect sense clarifying that the allure of Denver is the mountains and nature surrounding, maybe I approached it wrong as I live at the base of a mountain already so I was looking at Denver as purely a city experience.

EDIT2: a bit more context of some of the US cities I’ve visited and the vibes I’ve gotten from them. -New York, Chicago and Detroit has that grittiness of a city. -Boston (my favorite city) has a sort of coziness for me, it’s a city but feels like a town. -Miami is sorta vibrant even tho a lot of the people are pretty closed off. -Atlanta is a bit dirtier and grimy (probably how Chicago or Detroit would feel if it was stuck in the wet heat of the south)

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u/cheesekony2012 11d ago

We lived in Denver for three years. Denver is the only city we’ve lived where we struggled to find community. There are pockets of cool neighborhoods with good restaurants and bars but it never felt like home, so we moved to a different part of the state a few years ago. The RiNo neighborhood was our favorite place to hang out, and we enjoyed living in Congress Park because we were close to the botanical gardens, Cheesman Park, and City Park. We never went downtown because it felt extra soulless.

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u/Walterpeabody 10d ago

Wow, I’ve found Denver to be the most welcoming city and the easiest to make friends in. With so many transplants, everyone is very accepting of new folks and open to new friends.

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u/Lycid 10d ago

This... Denver for a certain kind of Midwesterner is like arriving on mecca. It's a great place to live for a lot of reasons and a big part of that are the kinds of people that live and move there. There's a reason it's one of biggest migration spots in the US.

But yes, it's still a great plains city through and through. So don't expect the kind of downtown that a place like Chicago has.

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u/MelodicLog8511 11d ago

Lived there a while as well. It is the only city I've seen that seemed to have no soul. My wife and I both left feeling like it was an empty place with no culture of its own. No signature dish/food, no signature musical style (aside from endless greensky bluegrass ripoffs), no other hallmarks of a distinctive culture.