[su_heading size=”18″]A Family Stay at the Broadmoor[/su_heading]

This family and pet friendly historic hotel in Colorado Springs is beautifully manicured with tennis, golf and nine restaurants all within walking distance.

…After our stay at the dude ranch, the final leg of our trip was spent in Colorado Springs at The Broadmoor.

European Elegance meets Western Hospitality:

The hotel boasts 744 rooms and suites located on sprawling manicured grounds. Guests can entertain themselves on the 13 tennis courts, in the three swimming pools, the health spa and the three high altitude golf courses designed by two iconic golf course designers, Donald Ross and Robert Trent Jones, Sr.

It was opened in 1919 by the cunning businessman with a vision, Spencer Spec Penrose, an influential founder of important landmarks throughout the Pikes Peak region.

After watching Midnight in Paris with my pals at Aspen Film, Im thinking I wouldn’t mind going back in time to the 20s in Colorado to meet Penrose, my interpretation of the Great?Gatsby of the West and, at that time, labeled as Prince of entertainers and bonfidante of rare quality.

The petite woman checking us in was efficient, keeping up with the standards of the hotel that has generated the country’s longest-running consecutive winner of the Mobil five-star rating and the AAA five-diamond award (since the 1958 inception for Mobil and since 1976 for AAA). With impeccable manners reflecting The Broadmoor motto, Every Person Every Time, she handed our room key/cards to our bellman.

Starving, we took the hotel shuttle bus to one of the nine hotel restaurants, Summit, an American Brasserie with an eclectic, innovative wine and cocktail program that I sadly did not get the chance to experience fully, one of the fall backs to traveling with children.

Thanks to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I did however enjoy a heavenly dinner solo while the boys sat eating.mac and cheese…at the bar while watching the game.

The restaurant, designed by Adam Tihany, is made to make you feel as though you are sitting in a car with everything going by very quickly, and has received honors in the Robb Report for Best of the Best, and Esquires Best New Restaurants and Best New Design. I slowed down amidst the contemporary design to snuggle into the booth to eat and write, while sipping on a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio.

Swaggering home in the warm summer evening with all of our arms intertwined, Brevitt begged me to walk the enchanting grounds of the hotel with him. I knew it would be a stroll that would stay with him forever; walking with his mum under the full moon’s glow shining on the emerald blue sky, the reflections of the lights from the buildings sparkling on the lake, but everybody else was tired and so we crawled into our incredibly soft sheets and passed out.

The next morning we had a slew of things to do, beginning with riding the Pike’s Peak Cog Railway, the world’s highest cog railroad that takes families to the 14,110 foot summit of Pike’s Peak. The kids were excited to travel up a fourteener by train, but plans took a turn when Preston woke up with glands the size of miniature golf balls. Worried that I may be pushing them too hard with our week long itinerary, I decided to grant us a day of lounging instead. We ate breakfast in the room with the doors open to views of the red clay tiled roofs of The Broadmoor and then headed down to lounge in the elegant cabanas by the horizon level pool.

We spent a luxurious afternoon, drinking Virgin Pina Coladas and taking in the scene, rising only to play dolphin in the pool and to plunge down the slides.

But the boys can only be in one place for so long before they start to wrestle, which led to high pitched screaming from Tucker, and flying flip-flips over to the adjacent cabana.

I went over to apologize and asked if any of the six Texan ladies, lounging and drinking Bloody Marys after a morning of tennis, cared to trade places. Sounded as though somebody was taking his arm off, they lightheartedly commented, referring to the scream that they left home to get away from. Perhaps I was doing it all wrong.

We lazily rose from our chairs and took our daily walk around the grounds, or shall I say I walked while they tumbled? It was all so beautiful, the flowers (grown in the hotel’s greenhouse), the mouldings on the buildings (renovated in 2001 and 2002 by hired museum restorers), the swans in the lake. The guests and staff that passed us along the way seemed genuinely entertained by my mass of boys who heaped on top of each other at every turn. How do those Europeans keep their children so well-mannered and behaved?

In the evening we ate at the Golf Club Dining Room. With walls opening up to the outdoors and the beautiful views, we enjoyed yet another delicious meal. For dessert we sat at the exterior fire pit and roasted marshmallows to our hearts content.

When I first visited The Broadmoor with Baddy, I knew that it was a place where we had to come back with the children, but what I did not realize was how much there was to do around the hotel, and in Colorado Springs. So much to do that we couldn’t fit it all in with the two days we were there, so we missed some of it, like the free movies offered and the wearable art workshop, but we had a tremendous time trying, which will be reported in my next post.

**Disclaimer: Although we received comped meals and rooms at this hotel, all of our opinions are our own.