In March 2013 my cousin Deb, technically my second cousin since my dad and her mom are first cousins, came to visit Denver from Bozeman, Montana with Pascal, the exchange student from Hong Kong who was spending a school year with her and her husband John. Deb and I have both lived in a number of places around the U.S. over the last couple decades, Deb usually in the northernmost tier of states and I usually not very far from the 40^th parallel. When we haven't been too far apart in east-west distance we’ve gotten together from time to time at her residence or mine – in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. I think that’s all the states.

Deb and Pascal stayed with a college friend of hers in Parker, a southern suburb, rather than with me in my cramped little Man Cave, but I got to play tour guide for a couple days with them . I’m good at that! I should mention that Deb is the one who sent me as a gift the "Man Cave" sign I have hanging in my window.

So what to do when your cousin comes to town with an exchange student teenager? Well, one snowy day we went to the Denver Art Museum in the morning and then for a walk through the Civic Center and around downtown, and had a big lunch at the Celtic Tavern. Pascal really liked the blue bear peering into the Denver Convention Center, also one of my favorite pieces of public art in Denver.

We then drove over to the Denver Aquarium on the western edge of downtown. I had been once before back in its early years of operation in the 1990s when it was called Colorado’s Ocean Journey. I haven’t kept up with institutions finances over the years but don’t think it’s been a huge commercial success. The concept of a regional aquarium is a nice one, but Colorado’s not that big a market to support a major facility with big crowd-pleasing attractions like marches of the penguins, orca shows, an porpoise-petting . That said, though, on both my visits I thought the aquarium was quite nice with two major concentrations. One of them is appropriately regional and follows the Colorado River its distance from alpine ecosystems in the Rockies all the way to the Sea of Cortez. The second is Indonesia, which offers huge opportunities for displays from tropical reef ecosystems to those of freshwater jungle rivers. And an Asian jungle theme allows for a major crowd pleaser in the form of tigers. I guess it’s involved in species preservation efforts since my understanding is Indonesian tiger subspecies are especially endangered. All in all it’s pretty nice…and they’d really like you to eat at the seafood-oriented restaurant on premises too!

But Deb likes German food and complains often about the lack of a decent German restaurant in Bozeman. So I took them to Café Berlin, an institution that used to be on East 17^th Avenue the times I went more than a decade earlier but now appears to be on the second floor of a building along the 16^th Street pedestrian mall . I suppose the location is convenient for people downtown, but it seems like a German restaurant should be in a quaint stand-alone half-timbered building and not on the lower floor of a modern highrise. Anyway, we started off with potato pancakes and a sausage platter as appetizers and shared tastes of each other’s entrees of Jaeger Schnitzel, Wiener Schnitzel, and Rouladen. Deb was very happy and Pascal intrigued by a new cuisine. I thought it would be cute if Pascal were to pose for a picture with my Stein of beer, but Deb was worried he (and she) might get into big trouble if it were ever seen.

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is also among the cream of the crop of institutions supported by our arts and culture sales tax surcharge. I believe it’s actually quite large for a city Denver’s size and has good paleontological and cultural sections, rooms to explore the dynamics of the human body, exhibits that don’t shy away from explaining evolution, and lots of stuffed dead animals from around the world with backgrounds painted to look like their native habitats. I had been to the museum once before, but that was ages ago. The view of Denver’s downtown skyline with the snow-capped mountains behind across the expanse of City Park from the museum is also one of the city’s classic vistas.

Well, after the museum I thought we’d go for a ride for some variety . I took them west to Golden, and no, I didn’t take Deb and Pascal on the Coors Brewery tour for free samples at the end. We drove up the mountain road for the view of Denver from Lookout Mountain and a visit to Buffalo Bill’s Grave. Deb and John had taken Pascal to the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in Cody, so I figured I show them where the famous man rests permanently and take in the vulture’s eye view of the Denver area while we’re there.

My entertaining didn’t stop there. I had a couple days skiing at Copper Mountain already planned but attended Denver’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade with Deb and Pascal when I got back on Saturday (a blog entry of its own). After the parade we went for some very untraditional Saint Patrick’s food for lunch at Le Central, my favorite French restaurant. Tasting my mussels was where Pascal drew the line on culinary adventure, which is surprising since the Chinese, and particularly those from southern China around Hong Kong, are known for eating virtually anything including lots of creepy crawly looking things from the sea. Well, it was a good visit and a pleasure to entertain Deb and Pascal in Denver!