This past weekend I escaped south to visit one of my best friends down in Colorado Springs. We had plans to go to afternoon tea at the gloriously beautiful Broadmoor hotel. The last time I had visited the historic hotel, I noticed a carriage museum on the map but we hadn't made it over. This weekend we made time to pop in and what a cool little museum it was! The room was full of horse drawn carriages from the mid 1850's up to the transition to automobiles! I have seen carriages before of course, but here the doors were opened and you could basically stick your head inside and really check out the interiors. It was really cool to get an up close look at carriages, coaches, phaetons and more from the different decades of the Victorian period. As a historical fiction writer it was invaluable visual knowledge to use later in my writing.
The museum also had a great (and well loved) 1928 Cadillac and quite a few other cars (of the early racing variety). We we had to run over to our tea so we didn't get to check out the racing cars much. Sadly when we got over to the west tower building (where the tea was to be held) we were informed that the tea only ran through August! They might want to put that on their website! I was so disappointed! We ended up going to several other cute restaurants that day on a sort of mini appetizer tour of Colorado Springs. Gina knows all of the good foodie places in the Springs so I was in very good hands! We finished the night with lavender cocktails at Coquette and then went home and watched Funny Girl which neither of us had seen before. (My historic costume side was like "what the hell era is this movie even supposed to be!" the entire movie, but Streisand was great)
I love carriages! It's so great that you could get up close and look inside. They had quite a few at Gretna Green when I went last year, but you were at a small distance and couldn't see the insides at all, which was a shame.
ReplyDeleteI think that was the best part, being able to literally stick your head inside and get a real feel for what the carriages would have been like to ride in. I have to say most seem like they would have been quite cramped (or cozy I suppose depending on who you were sitting with!)
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