Hire a babysitter, put on your high heels and best jeans (hey, this is Denver) and head to festive Cherry Creek North this holiday season for date night.

Start the evening off with a cocktail or glass of Veuve Cliquot at Second Home, the swank bar in the JW Marriott. If it's warm enough, like it was this past Saturday night, you can comfortably sit at the outside fire pit and its accompanying heat lamps.

Then head to Soleil for a dinner of Meditterranean tapas dishes -- the more, the merrier with tapas, so invite some friends along, too. Our waiter was full of good suggestions on what and how much to order -- without making us feel like schmucks for ordering safe standbys like the wood fired pizza.

After dinner, walk two doors down to The Q for live blues. Yes, live blues. We've been twice and both bands played blues that made it impossible to sit still. It's one of the few Denver bars that offers live music at 9:00 (parents, you know what a relief that is) that is not ear-piercingly loud. The crowd is a nice mixture of young and old (how great is it to see gray-haired couples dancing to the blues???), a great bar on one side and delicious, casual barbeque on the other. The owners of Soleil opened The Q after years of their patrons asking where some good live music, in walking distance, was.