Colorado Babymoon - Part 3
Since Colorado’s a pretty small state, we had a week, and we were only staying on the eastern side of the mountains, it gave us flexibility to take our time in each city. So, like I mentioned in the previous post, we returned to the Denver Central Market for breakfast/brunch and hung around for a few hours before heading out to our next destination.
We bought pastries from Izzio Bakery and coffee and chai from Crema Bodega, and oh my, were those pastries especially tasty. N got a croissant (which he enjoyed), and I took a risk and got something I’d never heard of - a queen pastry, which is actually a kouign-amann. The woman serving us recommended the apple caramel one, so although there were a few chocolate ones that looks indulgent and yummy, I decided to go with the apple caramel for a lighter breakfast. And oh my, I am so glad I made that decision. I was so pleasantly surprised to find that the apple caramel was not too sweet, the texture was a perfect combination of crispiness and soft chewiness, and the apple to dough ratio was a perfect balance. I have a whole set a sweet teeth for sure, but I’m not usually one to pick caramel off the menu, and I was honestly a little concerned it’d be more sweet than apple-y. But it wasn’t! It was SO tasty.
Crema’s pour-over coffee was decent, and we were happy when we discovered that the chai latte was not a some kind of mix or watered down tea, but some kind of house-made chai spiced blend. It was just a bit too spiced for me, so N and I actually ended up trading and I got his latte :)
We got to the market pretty early in the morning, spent some time chilling and got a little snack from Izzio - the labne cheese on rustico toast, it was also really good - while we waited for High Point Creamery to open at lunch time. We were so excited to order an ice cream flight. We got to pick 5 different flavors, and the flight came with a house-made chocolate fudge sauce and freshly made waffle chip. Oh my. We were again slightly disappointed by the texture (lacking some density) in the ice cream, which seemed very similar to the Little Man Ice Cream quality (we were beginning to wonder if something about the high altitude affected the density of ice cream here), but the flavors and chocolate sauce definitely made up for the lacking texture. We agreed that our personal favorite flavor was Basil with Blackberry Swirl. N’s second favorite was the Corvus Coffee, and I liked the Coconut Creme Brulee that I picked out. So much flavor yumminess!
After our satisfying ice-cream-for-lunch endeavor, we headed out of Denver to Estes Park. Before heading to our B&B, we stopped at the Stanley Hotel to look around the haunted but beautiful place that inspired Stephen King’s novel, The Shining. We were so excited to be making our way closer to the Rockies!