As I sit outside at Taki’s, a little Japanese dive on Colfax Avenue in the Capitol Hill section of Denver -- slightly east of downtown -- I marvel at the warm saki I am sipping and the fine Spring weather I am enjoying.

What a strange place Denver can be -- if for nothing else than for its odd climatic moods. I have been here in the dead of winter getting slammed with a 10-ft snow -- only to have it all melt away by the following morning with the temp rising above freezing.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I came from the lingering cool of a New York March-into-April only to see people in the Mile High City galavanting in shorts and sleeveless t-shirts (always a pleasurable sight after winter’s cover-ups). But I still have to be thankful that I finally find a Spring here -- and through the glow of a this light aromatic liquid as well.

Not the usual thing I look for in Denver, but that's one of those little surprises that makes this city a worthy place to visit even for a have-seen-it-all New Yorker. Hey, even the waitress, Justina -- a former Oregonian from Roseburg -- found this place a better place to park oneself after a life of too many rainy days and gray.

And she doesn’t drive -- making the bus from Lakewood, CO, her main means of transport, a curious turn given that I'm in a place where people are so car-driven. So I linger over the saki as the 4:30 - 7 pm happy hour ends and my daughter makes her way from Aurora westerly -- late as usual.