Colorado Springs

I won’t give a detailed account of the week we spent in Colorado. My mom and I got to see my sister, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew when they weren’t working or in school (although my sister switched some things and was able to spend more time with us.) We stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn (although I never saw a garden.) We were supposed to have a smoking, handicapped room but they messed up and only gave us a smoking room – and 4 bottles of water to make up for not being able to get a handicapped room (as though water would make it better.) We also rented a car at the Avis counter from the Colorado Springs Airport. The guy was very slimy and when he wasn’t lying to us (about having to charge us for another driver, which was free) he was pushing us for everything and anything he could. He even said my sister was my “significant other” which is just plain gross. It was my first time suing Avis and I probably would use someone else next time.

We went to the Air Force Academy Chapel one day. It seems the Air Force doesn’t care about the handicapped as they make you park about 10 minutes from the entrance and walk an obstacle course to find the few ramps. Then when we finally got into the chapel it is divided into different faiths. The main and largest chapel was for the Protestants. There was a scandal a few years back where the Air Force Academy was charged for forcing everyone –regardless of their faith – to go to the Protestant chapel. We then saw the small Buddhist chapel, Jewish chapel and the Catholic chapel. It would have been better if the Air Force had either made each chapel the same size or have one chapel for all the different faiths. That way the Air Force doesn’t show favoritism for one religion over the others as they did with the Protestantism over all the others.

We went bowling on Fort Carson one day too. I didn’t play, but watched everyone else and took some pictures. It was a nice, quick night (we were only there about 2 hours before they closed.)

My sister is involved with a Krav Maga (Israeli martial arts) and they had a full day demonstration the Saturday we were there. My mom and I went there and stayed a few hours, but then we had to leave to do things for my niece. I would have preferred to stay at the Krav Maga since it was pretty interesting.

We ate Sunday brunch at the Broadmoor. The last time we were in Colorado Springs (in December 2011) we ate at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort for brunch and while that was ok the Broadmoor’s was bigger and better. We had a really nice time eating and hanging out with everyone.

Now to talk more about food. The state I live in doesn’t have many restaurant choices and almost nothing except gas stations and hospitals are open 24/7 so when we were in Colorado Springs we made use of all the food choices. We ate at IHOP a few times, Arbys, Panda Express (which was really nasty,) Edelweiss German Restaurant  (which is really good,) Wendys and Red Robin. We ate at Red Robin twice. The first time with my sister-in-law when we got to Colorado Springs from the Denver Airport. That time we had no issues. The second time we ate there with my sister a few days later and had an incident. We ordered our food (I got a burger with a side salad) and we needed silverware to eat. We asked the waiter for them since they weren’t already on the table. He came back and said they were being washed. Since we didn’t have our food at that time we didn’t press it, but when the food came and we still didn’t have anything we told the woman who brought the food out that we either needed silverware or to take back the food and keep it warm until the silverware was washed. Out of 3 plates she only took 1 back to keep warm. The waiter came back and asked how everything was and we told him. He just said there were no clean silverware and so we asked to speak with the manager. When the manager finally came (after the waiter came back again with nothing and I said he was being an idiot as he expected us to eat salads, etc with our bare hands) he didn’t seem smarter than the rest of his staff. I explained that we wanted the food kept warm until we could get the silverware to eat with. He took the 2 plates back and eventually we got the silverware and the food, but by then I had had enough and just wanted to leave. We also ate at the Texas Roadhouse and the ribs and steak were great.