This post should probably be split into at least two parts, but F it, I’m in a car in the middle of Indiana, so what else am I going to do but write (and listen to Amanda’s almost intolerable music selection. Really? The Moody Blues? Ugh.)?
When I last left off, Amanda and I had just left kind of depressing Pittsburgh and were heading to hopefully not as depressing Chicago. How does a car get from Depressing to less depressing? Through Ohio of course. Duh.
Amanda and I went to Cleveland for no reason in particular much earlier this year (Southwest was having a sale on flights) and it was rainy/cold/drab/grey for the entirety of the trip. Having been all the way through Ohio now, and not just in a single city, I can say that the weather is never, ever never nice. Ohio sucks. Lots. Regardless, we did what we could to make the best of it. We stink at making the best of things apparently…
We decided, after looking at our planned route, and a map, to make hay (or whatever) for Maumee Ohio, as it’s pretty much in the middle of where we started, and where we wanted to end up.
After our already written about mediocre bagels in Pittsburgh, we piled in the slowly dying Mercury Mariner and headed to the Knights in Maumee.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped for some lunch, here:
It was interesting, to say the least. When we pulled into the lot, this mangy little jerk jumped up onto the hood of the car and tried to make my allergies go crazy:
I successfully avoided the three cats that roam around the palatial grounds and headed in:
Incredible. This place was/is awesome. Check out those suspenders. Also, of interest in that picture: When I first looked at it, I wondered, briefly, who the Amish person with the beard in the left hand background was. After a second, I realized that it was Amanda and her beloved and ugly scarf.
After being seated, we were, obviously, handed menus and were greeted by this great cover:
Now, this cover is great for reasons obvious. If you look at it a little closer, you’ll notice the slogan (which doesn’t match the sign on the building). I like the slogan because they aren’t claiming to be the only place in town for good food, but “a” place. I like a little expectation management.
Another menu quirk? Some of the pages were printed on the backside of already used paper:
See the nice spreadsheet grid?
As you can see, I overanalyzed the menu a bit, so I had no trouble ordering:
These hot dogs were pretty tasty. Oversized and beefy. Yum. For dessert, Amanda kept her quest for a great piece of pie going:
It was kind of crappy. It tasted almost exactly like the packaged, Hot Pocket shaped pies you can get in a convenience store. No biggie. The good news? Here’s the bill:
!
Fourteen bucks for two hot dogs, chips, a pickle, tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, pie and coffee. Hilarious.
After a surprisingly awesome lunch (taking price into consideration), we headed to our awesome hotel in Maumee. With a quick detour:
The museum next door was closed. Crap.
After that, we went to the hotel/motel/inn/whatever:
The room:
jealous?
We picked this place (The Knight’s Inn) because we wouldn’t have to pay for it, as we have a poop ton of Wyndham Rewards points. Thanks Wyndham.
*Aside* – If I were from Europe and was friends with a real, actual knight, I would definitely book the Knight’s Inn for him whenever we travelled to America. He’d be super pumped about going to an Inn just for knights. He would be in for a real surprise. *Aside over*
Oh, and another note about the room we stayed in. This was the door stop in the bathroom:
Yup. A huge bolt. Why spend the 88 cents for an actual door stop when you can just use a railroad spike?
After unpacking a bit and getting used to the pleasant elderly home scent, we headed across the parking lot to dinner. I took pictures and all of that, but it was a chain, as I found out later, so I’m not counting it. Sorry.
Not a chain? Breakfast the next morning:
A small diner in a strip mall isn't;t that unique. Or is it? Inside we got breakfast:
Typical and unremarkable. Passable breakfast, possibly sub-par, as the bacon was a little bland. What makes Sam’s Place unique and pleasurable is the atmosphere. There’s an old man who plays guitar during breakfast. Apparently, his wife died a few weeks ago and he’s bored. he sings about rocking chairs and the like, and it’s quite pleasant:
After our interesting breakfast, we drove straight through Indiana with only a few stops. Oh, and to note the weather, our entire time in Ohio was miserable. The weather there is terrible. Don’t ever visit. Not even by accident.
Somewhere in Indiana, I pulled over upon seeing two things:
1. This, for reasons hopefully obvious:
2. This, because it looked like a super great thing to do:
The above place was/is called FlagStix (with an X!) and had a batting cage, a driving range, and sadly, a miniature golf course. After smashing some balling into the Indiana day (notice the good weather, Ohio? Taking Notes?)…:
…we played some miniature golf. We like to bet on such trivial games, Amanda and I. We bet on this one. It’s been retold on Amanda’s blog (here), but here’s the gist of it. I was winning by three strokes after 17 holes of playing. Amanda got a hole in one (in a big wide house thing that ate your ball). I needed to not get a four to win. On my third shot, I hit the ramp going into the big wide house thing, and part of the way up the ramp, the ball smashed into something and bounded off to the right, leaving me no shot. I lost. Crap. Crapcrapcrap. Upon closer inspection, I lost because of the ramp:
Take a look and let me know if you find the integrity of that simple machine any good? See those screws sticking out of it? I didn’t, until it was too late. Son of a beeword. I now get to do 45 minutes of yoga. I am not going to enjoy it and more importantly, my hamstrings, which will be shredded, will not enjoy it either. Farts.
After we finished up at FlagStix (with an X!), we were obviously hungry, and ended up here:
We chose it based solely upon its name, as we thing it’s pronounced like that synonym for butt. The food was standard pub fare (but a NASCAR pub):
I had the “Bar Fish” and Amanda had the BLT (T is gross) and a salad. The Bar Fish was mostly made up of battered and fried white fish of unknown origin, but was obviously delicious. Frying things (other than creamed corn) is usually a great idea. Bar Fish was no exception.
After Synonym for Butt’s, we drove to Chicago. Finally.
Our accommodations, thanks to Marriott Points (lots of hotel stays lately), were slightly better than our accommodations in Maumee:
We unloaded our stuff, rested for a few minutes and headed straight for dinner. Awhile ago, it was suggested to Amanda to get the best Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza at this restaurant:
Ridiculous to spell, but definitely worth a visit. It was truly delicious:
It may not look that great, but it was. The sauce was a little sweeter than most pizza sauces, the cheese was mountainous, the mushrooms were standard, the pepperoni was a little spicier than I expected and the curst was buttery, flaky and thick. It all added up to an incredibly enjoyable dinner. It really was exceptional pizza.
After pizza, we walked the few blocks back to the Spring Hill Suites or whatever our hotel was called and called it a night, as we had a lot planned for the next day, kind of.
The first meal of the day, obviously, is breakfast. Amanda’s favorite meal, for reasons unknown to me, is breakfast. She love it. A lot. Since she is in love with most things breakfast, she chose a local spot with a preposterous name and an unexpected interior:
This place had all sorts of different options, and I think Amanda and I sampled them all. Here’s just my order (and an action shot of Amanda slathering potatoes in ketchup):
Sausage (great), eggs (meh), hash browns (meh), wheat toast (good), and a Belgian Waffle (delicious). Oh, and a chocolate milk, because I need strong bones, but aren’t adult enough for Viactive Supplements. I found my meal generally pleasurable, but Amanda, man did she love the essword out of her meal. After she gorged on her meal (spinach/ham/cheese scramble, hash browns, triple berry pancakes with granola, house blended orange/strawberry juice, tea and water), I interviewed her on the streets:
She loved it. She also wrote about it extensively.
After breakfast, I bought a wheelbarrow for Amanda to ride in, and slowly wheeled her through the city (as a fast wheeling might have made her barf. Gross.). I navigated some stairs and unloaded Amanda on a boat, as we were taking an architectural tour of the city. It was pretty interesting, but I’m not going to write all about it here, as it’s facts and boring. Instead, the best picture I took, of a modernist building reflecting some other, less modern buildings:
After the ride, Amanda had digested enough, I dumped the wheelbarrow in the greenish river and we made our way over to the Willis Tower, which used to be the Sears Tower.
During the trip, we passed this:
Oof.
Oh, and along the way, I snapped some proof of Amanda’s distaste of city streets. She refuses to cross them without seeing all cars in the area stopped or at the very least, no cars at all in sight. I crossed, without being murdered by a car or seven, turned around and noticed that Amanda was shivering on the other side of the street, paralyzed in terror:
She did finally make it across the street, and many others, but I wanted to point it out nonetheless.
After probably a few more minor traffic induced strokes, we finally made it to the tower:
We went into what we thought was the lobby (for tourists) and found out that it was, in fact, not the lobby (for tourists). Unfazed, Amanda asked the security guard fellow if we could take the stairs. Seriously. the tallest building in America.
He laughed and looked at her like she was crazy (then I told him she was crazy) and he figured she was serious. She was. Sadly for her (luckily for my quadriceps), the only staircase is for emergencies only. We headed around the block to the tourist entrance, paid the tourist fee and took the tourist elevator to the 103rd floor:
The above is a picture of a little bump out thing they have put in on one side of the building. Basically, it’s a big reinforced glass box that juts out of the side of the building, and allows for a blurry view of the ground directly below your feet:
It’s kind of creepy. The glass box also allows for some nice panorama photography:
Thanks Photoshop.
Once we walked around for a bit, and Amanda snagged a postcard from the gift shop, we took the tourist elevator back down to the ground. On our way out, I noticed this great big chalkboard is what looked like a cafeteria.
We sidled in and got to business:
Is it not the best example of irony you’ve seen in awhile? She makes fun of my penmanship, but makes her exclamation point look like a deformed lowercase letter L. nice Amanda, real nice…
Chalk handwriting finished, we left the building, walked back to the hotel and got ready for some dinner. Amanda chose a German place and I agreed. The other option was directly across the street, Harry Caray’s, but that place is too touristy for this trip. Sorry Paul.
We walked (my legs don’t like the city) to little Germany (not a real place in Chicago) and found the restaurant (another parenthetical for symmetry).
Ho hum. Another boring picture of another boring restaurant. Fine jerks. You want something different? How about this?
Take a look at that. While not as awesome as a homeless man in a bra, it’s still pretty good. In case you can’t read the sign (it’s a little blurry, as I snapped this while walking), here’s what it says: “I’m not a bad girl, just made bad decisions.” Nice.
Back in the restaurant, I ordered some super tasty three cheese macaroni with chicken and chorizo. It was, again, super tasty. It was extra cheesy, but also had a little bit of Cajun spice to it, to keep it interesting:
And for dessert? A nice German root beer float and some German chocolate cake:
The root beer float was exactly root beer float tasting and I didn’t have any of the cake, as it had some disgusting coconut and almond frosting on it. Amanda said it was good, but she probably threw up after she ate it, as both coconuts and almonds are barf city.
After dinner, we walked back to the room and watched some downloaded Dexter and The Amazing Race.
If you’re looking for some nightlife on this blog, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
We woke up this morning, had a bland hotel buffet breakfast, packed up, finished some things and headed out to this place:
You may have seen it on TV already, so I won;t go crazy describing it. Amanda and I each ordered a SuperDawg and ate it. It was a very good hot dog, with mustard, onions (Amanda didn’t have them), peppers (we both didn’t have them), and relish (I didn’t have it), topped with a dill pickle and packed with a side of really good french fries:
The hot dog was super high quality beef and it tasted that way. I never would have dropped a pickle onto my hot dog, but it was surprisingly good. A nice flavor to smoosh into a bun with the dog. Also, we both ordered a super thick chocolate shake to wash it down. It was a little difficult to drink, as again, it was super thick, but once you pop the top off of the cup, you can just kind of scoop it up with the straw and eat it. It was an above average shake to compliment a highly above average hot dog.
All in all, Chicago was a nice city. the weather was perfect, which was a plus, and the city itself was clean and aesthetically nice. The architecture and public spaces were well thought out and overall, again, it was a nice experience in a well loved city (everyone we talked to about it said we would love it. Nay, love it.). Ii can’t say that I loved it, but the food was excellent, which is what I’m mostly concerned with.
That’s it for now. Next time? This:
If you build it…
No comments:
Post a Comment