Denver Pavilions — Attraction in Denver

After hearing online about how “rundown” and “full of homeless people” downtown Denver is, I decided during my most recent trip to Colorado to go and see for myself what it was like. I parked in a parking garage and walked around for a few hours. Eventually I ended up here thinking it was 16th Street Mall (apparently they’re separate locations)

Contrary to what you’ll hear online, downtown Denver is actually a very nice, lively place. I didn’t see any homeless people in this particular area and felt super safe walking around. This is a really cool, clean little outdoor mall with several small and big name vendors. There’s a souvenir shop and a super slow elevator that takes you to the different levels. I’ve never really seen a mall like this. Super pedestrian friendly streets and walkways with an interesting mixture of modern and older architecture in the surrounding buildings.

The closer you get to the capitol building (which is partly visible from the street) the more construction you’ll run into. Apparently, from what I’ve read online, there’s a lot of renovation being done down here in recent years, but they have walkways that take you through the construction areas to the Capitol. Lots of cool restaurants and stores I didn’t have time to check out. You could really spend the entirety of multiple days checking...

This mall looks nice, and has nice stores, but any place that has a code on the bathroom, and instructs all stores that they cannot give you the code until after you purchase something deserves less than 1 star. I have been many places in my life, but never has the bathroom been held hostage behind a purchase for me.

I know this seems like a rant, but I want you to imagine just leaving a restaurant, getting the urge to use the bathroom, rushing to find a directory, finding where the bathroom is, running up to the bathroom door, and finding a lock on the door on Par with a government building and reading the sign that says you must purchase something at a store before receiving a code. Then rushing back out , finding the nearest store, grabbing whatever miscellaneous item you find, waiting in line praying you don't have an accident, purchasing said item, then rushing back to the bathroom with your new found useless item.

I would love nothing more than to post the bathroom code here for all to see, but I'm sure they will take down this post or probably have plans to change the code every week like they are protecting government secrets.

I urge you all, use the bathroom before coming here, or even better don't shop...

With the exception of a few staple stores and restaurants, this strip mall mostly serves as a way to bypass. We naturally form in crowds of the 16th Street Mall. It is currently a maze though if you're not careful due to the escalators constantly breaking down from ice. And the ongoing construction and renovations on the 16th Street Mall. At the very least, it isn't a very stressful maze, however. Cars aren't allowed to bypass through the Mall so you often see this place becoming really crowded during rush hour as pedestrians attempt to avoid getting hit by cars. Trying to avoid hitting pedestrians. Supposedly this place has security but I've never seen, And I'm prone to wandering around places contemplatively so I often get randomly checked. I can highly recommend the bakery/diner on the corner as I had spent much of my twenties ordering breakfast from there. I haven't tried the restaurant or the theater though. I do plan to before I leave Denver. I don't think anything can kill that hot topic(not saying it's not welcome, I'm just acknowledging that it's immortal) Also, I don't know if anyone remembers when this place got filled to the brim with meow wolf clones, And then the selfie museum...