Denver travel guide
Where to stay, the best time to visit, what a day costs, and the traps to skip.
Things to do in Denver, planned over three days
Best time to visit Denver
• a note or something on ✦ an occasion worth the trip
Ski-gateway Denver and the Stock Show: sunny cold days, quiet museums, lowest city hotel rates outside Stock Show weeks.
The volatile shoulder: March is the snowiest month, by May patios, trails and gardens are fully back. Best value if plans stay flexible.
Peak Denver: Red Rocks at full tilt, rafting and RMNP fully open, late-afternoon thunderstorms. Most crowded and expensive.
Locals' favourite and the best answer: warm, dry September, aspen colour, summer crowds gone. Best months overall with late May to June.
The shoulder to skip unless Arts Week or an early ski opening is the point: cold and between seasons.
What's on
- National Western Stock Show & Rodeo mid-January, about 16 days
Rodeos, livestock and the longhorn parade down 17th Street.
- MLK Marade January
Denver's march and parade for Martin Luther King Jr Day.
- Rockies Opening Day early April
A downtown street party whatever the weather.
- Cinco de Mayo Festival May
At Civic Center, one of the largest Cinco de Mayo festivals in the US.
- Outside Days / Outside Festival late May-early June
Outdoor-industry festival downtown.
- Denver PrideFest late June
One of the country's largest Prides, at Civic Center.
- Juneteenth Music Festival June
In Five Points, the historic Black cultural district.
- Cherry Creek Arts Festival around July 4th weekend
A major outdoor arts festival in Cherry Creek.
- Underground Music Showcase late July
Music showcase on South Broadway.
- Denver Oktoberfest September weekends
Downtown Oktoberfest across September weekends.
Worth the trip for
Best things to do in Denver
Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre
A natural amphitheatre between red sandstone fins: the essential Denver concert, or a free morning hike and stair run.
Denver Art Museum
The main museum: Indigenous Arts of North America and Western American art in two landmark buildings.
Meow Wolf Denver | Convergence Station
Four alien worlds and 70-plus rooms of immersive art: a half-day, polarising but worth doing once, unhurried.
Denver Union Station
The restored 1914 station as city living room: great hall, bars and restaurants, and the start of the downtown loop.
Larimer Square
Denver's oldest block: lights overhead, cocktail bars and Comedy Works underneath, best as part of the downtown walk.
Dairy Block
A food hall and alley-bar cluster by Coors Field, with a big outdoor screen on game days.
Denver Botanic Gardens
23 acres of themed gardens and a tropical conservatory: the calm pick, worth two unhurried hours.
River North Art District
Warehouse streets covered in large-scale murals, with breweries, food halls and Mission Ballroom for after dark.
Where to stay in Denver
LoDo / Union Station
first trip, all-round base
The densest walkable cluster of restaurants, bars and sports, with the A Line to the airport at your door.
Cherry Creek
luxury, couples, a quiet trip
16 walkable blocks of boutiques and restaurants, tree-lined and calm, but a rideshare from LoDo and the museums.
RiNo
nightlife, food, a younger trip
Murals, breweries, food halls and several of the city's best restaurants, in a working warehouse district.
LoHi / Highland
local-feel, food-first trip
Denver's restaurant high street and leafy residential streets, a pleasant walk over the Highland Bridge from LoDo.
Capitol Hill / Golden Triangle
museums and value
The Art Museum, Capitol and Molly Brown House are here, with older, cheaper hotels: pick your exact block carefully.
Downtown CBD
convenience, convention trips
The convention centre, theatre complex and 16th Street, with good rates outside convention weeks but quieter evenings.
Think twice about
- East Colfax Avenue
Great for bars, music and restaurants, but its cheap motels see more crime than anywhere else you'd consider: eat here, sleep elsewhere.
- Civic Center Park / Colfax and Broadway blocks
Denver's roughest central patch, with the city's most concentrated visible homelessness and open drug use around the park and library.
- DIA / Pena Boulevard airport corridor
Isolated airport hotels 23 miles from downtown with nothing walkable: a false economy for a trip.
- Highway motel strips sold as Denver
Cheap 'Denver' hotels off I-70 and I-25 are car-dependent with nothing to walk to: check the map before you book.
Best restaurants in Denver
The Wolf's Tailor
Colorado's first two-star restaurant: grains, fermentation and wood fire in a calm residential room.
Beckon
An 18-seat Scandinavian-inflected chef's counter where the whole room watches one team cook.
Brutø
A tiny counter in the Dairy Block cooking almost entirely over a hearth, with a deep fermentation programme.
Alma Fonda Fina
Contemporary Mexican at its finest: order the agave-roasted camote with salsa macha and whipped requeson.
Kizaki
A luxurious edomae omakase counter from the chef who introduced sushi to Denver in 1984.
Safta
Modern Israeli built for sharing: wood-fired pita, lamb ragu hummus and whole grilled fish, plus a popular weekend brunch.
Tavernetta
Handmade pastas and a joyful Italian wine list by Union Station: the dinner that pleases everyone.
Guard and Grace
A big, bright wood-fired steakhouse that handles groups and birthdays without flinching.
Outdoor things to do in Denver
Cherry Creek Trail
About 40 miles of paved, mostly flat trail from Confluence Park: the altitude-friendly active start to a trip.
Washington Park
Where Denver lives outdoors: a 2.5-mile loop, two lakes, paddle boats and picnic lawns.
Arrowhead Golf Club
The spectacle golf pick: holes threaded through red sandstone formations like a quieter Red Rocks.
Fossil Trace Golf Club
A Jim Engh design in an old clay mine, with fossils and mining relics in play: pair it with a Golden afternoon.
CommonGround Golf Course
A Coore and Crenshaw design, walkable and strategic, priced like a muni: the smart-money golf pick.
City Park Golf Course
A redesigned 18 in the middle of town with skyline and mountain views.
Dinosaur Ridge
Real fossilised dinosaur footprints in tilted rock, a short guided or self-guided walk near Red Rocks.
Chautauqua Park
The Flatirons trails start here: steep, rocky loops, or just the meadow with the peaks behind it.
Best hotels in Denver
The Crawford Hotel
Inside Union Station itself: the Great Hall as your lobby bar and the A Line downstairs.
The Oxford Hotel
Denver's oldest hotel, from 1891, with the Prohibition-era Cruise Room martini bar inside.
The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block
A modern, art-filled hotel in the Dairy Block, food-hall adjacent.
The Rally Hotel at McGregor Square
Across from Coors Field in McGregor Square: the baseball-trip base.
The Ramble Hotel
RiNo's first hotel, built around a Death and Co cocktail bar in the lobby: the nightlife base done properly.
The Source Hotel
Attached to The Source market hall, with Safta and a rooftop pool deck with mountain views.
Clayton Hotel & Members Club
The Cherry Creek statement: members-club access, a rooftop pool and Alteño downstairs.
The Jacquard, Autograph Collection
The established luxury alternative in Cherry Creek: rooftop pool and bar, big mountain views.
Is Denver expensive? What a day costs
| Budget | $108 a person |
|---|---|
| Classic | $272 a person |
| Splurge | $550 a person |
A day of food, drink, sights and getting around, before the room
What to book ahead
- Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre: weeks ahead
- Meow Wolf Denver | Convergence Station: a few days ahead
- Denver Performing Arts Complex: a few days ahead
- Comedy Works Downtown: a few days ahead
- Oakwell Beer Spa: a few days ahead
- Arrowhead Golf Club: a few days ahead
- Fossil Trace Golf Club: a few days ahead
- CommonGround Golf Course: a few days ahead
- The Wolf's Tailor, Beckon, Kizaki and Alma Fonda Fina release weeks to a month out and prime counters vanish.
- RMNP runs timed-entry reservations roughly late May to mid-October: book the moment your date is set.
- Red Rocks concerts, Casa Bonita tranches, Meow Wolf weekends and Winter Park Express weekend trains all sell out ahead.
Is Denver safe?
- Altitude is the real risk: hydrate from the flight in, take day one easy and go easy on alcohol for 24 to 48 hours.
- Leave nothing visible in a car, anywhere, including trailheads: break-ins are the common visitor crime.
- Be off exposed summits and ridgelines by noon in July and August: summer lightning is a genuine killer.
Denver travel tips: tourist traps to skip
- 16th Street as a destination in itself: ride it and walk it, but the sights are at its ends and a block off it.
- Casa Bonita for the food, or without a reservation: it is theatre that serves dinner.
- The Downtown Aquarium, Elitch Gardens and the US Mint tour as adult headline sights: fillers, not pillars.
Getting around Denver: public transport and more
- The RTD A Line runs from DEN airport to Union Station in about 37 minutes; the $10 airport day pass covers onward RTD that day.
- Downtown needs no car: LoDo, the CBD, RiNo and the Golden Triangle are walkable, and the 16th Street FreeRide shuttle is free.
- I-70 to the mountains doubles or triples in drive time on Friday and Sunday peaks: schedule around it or take the ski train or Bustang.
Who Denver suits
| Solo travellers | Good |
|---|---|
| Groups of friends | Great |
| Couples | Great |
| Bachelor parties | Great |
| Families | Good |
| Bachelorette parties | Great |
Make Denver your trip
Swearby drafts the days from places people swear by. Swap any stop, then invite the crew by text, even friends without the app. Vote on dates, track costs as you go, and everyone gets one number at the end.
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