City Guide: Colorado Springs

     Colorado Springs is a city that offers the best of the great outdoors.

      A visit to Seven Falls, shopping  in Colorado Avenue, several strolls in Garden of the Gods and a tour to the Cave of the Winds – all of these make Colorado Springs a second to none city on the list of America's Best Cities of 2009 in ''Outside'' – popular American magazine focused on outdoors.

     You could have read about Colorado Springs in popular magazines, but it’s better to visit there. Booked.net can help you book any hotel you like from cheap hotels in Colorado Springs to those packed with luxuries all available with maps, photos and secure forms.

     Striking outdoors from dining out to Manitou Springs all take a back seat before Pikes Peak. Right here on the summit of Pikes Peak, near Colorado Springs, Katherine Lee Bates, inspired with this beauty, wrote America the Beautiful – a patriotic song of America "from sea to shining sea".

     It wasn’t only Bates who took Colorado Springs to  heart as in the 1890s English tourists, especially from London came there for striking views and adventure. Thus, Colorado Springs was nicknamed ''Little London''.

     It is certainly warmer than London. This is thanks to Pikes Peak that protects Colorado Springs from harsh weather despite the city looming high over the region at 6,035 feet above sea level higher than its neighbor Denver at 5,280 feet. The city covers 186sqmiles, making it Colorado's largest city in area and populous as well with population numbering 414,358 people in 2009.

     From a ''Little London'' to "the city of millionaires'', city's past today is best reflected in its rich cityscape. Attractions include;

- Garden of the Gods, sandstone formations enclosed by a city park

- Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, a small mountain zoo

- Cave of the Winds, caves near Manitou Springs

     It is also a destination steeped in history. In 1870, General William Jackson Palmer, a Civil War General from Pennsylvania, came to the area and envisioned Colorado Springs as a resort destination. In later years it converted into a mining town and by the 19^th century Colorado Springs was the leading mining exchange center of the world leading to it being called "the city of millionaires." When in 1904 there was only 100 nation's millionaires, Colorado Springs had 35 of them doing business there.

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