Slow Europe

It has not been 24 hours yet, so who knows - but so far we are in love! What a town! Twenty years ago we crossed Boulder off our “places to live” list for reasons that seem stupid today. Too close to a large city, too harsh of a winter.

Today we walked along the Boulder River, walked down the Pearl Street Pedestrian area, walked around the Mapleton neighborhood, then did a short hike to the Red Rocks. The town ends right at the hills and there are walking/hiking trails everywhere!

The town population is larger than Santa Fe - 100,000 (Santa Fe is 70,000), but almost half that is University of Colorado students and staff. Boulder is part of a 2.8 million population area, but the green belt that surrounds the town to the east and the mountains to the west make it seem separate.

Downtown is lively and fun. There is the most amazing non-chain bookstore on Pearl Street. Last night we had a great dinner at Sunshine, a very good vegetarian restaurant.

But as I said, it has not been 24 hours yet. I would upload a photo, but I forgot to bring a cable.

This is the gadget that could get me to leave my computer at home someday. Not yet, but maybe someday.

I finally bought a BlackBerry (and have been driving everyone crazy by emailing them from it). I did a ton of research online and when we were in NYC at Christmas, Stella gave me a demonstration of her BlackBerry.

I bought the BlackBerry 8700 from T-Mobile. There is a new BlackBerry 8800, but T-Mobile does not have it yet. I did not want the BlackBerry Pearl (although Stella loves hers), because this is all new to me and I wanted the larger keyboard and screen. Mine is pretty simple - no camera, no wifi, no GPS.

I selected T-Mobile instead of Cingular because T-Mobile has better prices and can be used internationally for a fixed fee. I have the cheapest plan - $50/month. This is a $30/month phone plan plus $20/month for unlimited email and internet access. I use the BlackBerry as my cell phone and use it for email and accessing the web.

This photo shows the main menu on the BlackBerry. You have a separate icon for each email address. Use the scrollwheel on the side to move between icons and click to open the icon.

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