Flashback post: Catalina

I've said before that when I told people I was moving to Chicago and that I had an LA bucket list, I'd have people add to it. The first instance of this was when while checking the Griffith Observatory off my list, my friend Emily asked, "What about Catalina?"

Catalina is an island off the coast of California. It actually is California, but a lot of people don't actually know it's there. I'd never been there, and didn't think I could go. Emily had wanted to go for her birthday the year before and I knew I couldn't because it can get really expensive. A trip on the Catalina Express with general seating is $36 each way. It's a lot for a day trip. But the suggestion stuck in my brain, and so I started doing research and found the best deal: the Catalina Express is free on your birthday, and my birthday fell on a Sunday. There are also Groupon deals, but we could only find them on the Catalina Flyer, which is different and would get us there are different times. So because my friends are awesome, a group of them ponied up the full amount to meet me at the Long Beach port so that we could have a day on an island. (I have the best friends in the world for many reasons, but that's the one I'm going to talk about in this post.)

The trip out there is about an hour, and it's nothing special. We got seats on the top deck, slathering on sunscreen and watching for dolphins. (I should note that exactly a week before this was Tijuana, where my feet were horribly blistered and I was sunburned to hell and back, so I took extra precautions for a trip where I knew I'd be in the sun again all day.) And when I checked in and got my ticket, I was given a blue ribbon so that people knew it was my birthday. I'm that loser who never really grew out of that high school mentality of "But someone might think I'll look like a dork!" so I didn't want to wear it and bring attention to myself, but I needed it to get on the boat. Then people on the boat would cheerfully wish me a happy birthday whenever they saw me. This was something that continued on the island, too. They're so used to people doing this that they'll just automatically be awesome to me. Granted, they were all awesome to my friends, too, but it was kind of nice having people say hi to me all day because they were probably contractually obligated in order to work there. You also get free stuff and discounts. I think I was able to get us a percentage off lunch, I got a discount at a candy shop where we went nuts with taffy and gummy sharks, I got free coffee, etc. There's a sizeable list of things where you get free gifts if you buy something else or free things or 20% off or whatever. If you go on your birthday and you're careful, you can do Catalina for almost free. Score!

Taken while whizzing by on a golf cart, fyi

Avalon, the big city there, is small. There are very few cars, and there's a waiting list in order to get yours on island. Instead, everyone walks or drives golf carts. Everyone's super nice and it's very quiet and relaxing, and I think I could maybe spend a year there before I ran (swam?) screaming back to a city because my lungs crave the pollution. There's a gorgeous casino that gives tours, you can go hiking and ziplining, you can go to spas... We didn't have that much time, maybe eight hours total, so we didn't want to give up a chunk of our time for one thing. Also, ziplining is pricey. Instead, we walked around and went into the many, many adorable little shops, trying on hats and buying food and little stuff. We also went to one of the beaches, but it's not like any other California beach I've been to. The sand is a lot rougher, and going into the water means walking over rocks. I didn't have a bathing suit, so I waited on the beach with Kelsey while the others went for a swim- and got to swim with a seal. Another thing is that they charge you to hang out on the beach. It's like $2 for a wristband, but there were people near us who were nice enough to give us theirs when they left, and also gave their drink menu with recommendations. The drinks were $10 and they came in little plastic cups, but they brought them right up to us on the sand and my god were they alcoholic. I did not plan to get drunk on a beach on my birthday, but it totally happened.

The other big thing we did was the golf carts. You can rent them for $20 per person for two hours for a four-person cart, and there was some trouble in actually getting it. We tried at the start of the day but would have to wait a long time, and then we ended up in line for a while as people returned theirs and it was a kind of slow process. But we got in there and with a short lesson in how to drive it, we were off. There are plenty of hills, and it's a little nervewracking at points going around curves by a cliff riding in a cart the driver literally just learned how to operate, but it's so much fun. It's a common thing, so we'd run into other people and everyone would pull over to take pictures of the gorgeous scenery. You drive through neighborhoods, see the houses and schools. We also found the Catalina Island Conservancy, the botanical gardens. We got there as they were closing, but there was a guy at the front who just let us in so we didn't actually realize they were closed, and we ended up walking along some of the trails and checking out the different plants. They wanted to do more, but I was not dressed correctly. I was wearing a skirt and sandals, and I was still recovering from last week's dehydration, so I let people take my camera to take pictures from the top of the Wrigley Monument while I waited on a bench at the bottom. By the time we left there- and by the time we had to escape because they'd locked us in, wtf- we decided to take the cart back to the rental place since we didn't have a ton of time left to do any one thing. Also, they give you a map, and it's not a big island, but I still got us lost because that's what happens when you let me navigate.

We had to be back at the dock by around seven, when it was starting to get cold and windy, and we got top spots on the boat back. That was my favorite part of the day. While it was super windy, we got to see the most gorgeous sunset I've ever seen, and at some point people started freaking out because they swore they saw a shark next to the boat, which I feel like was the universe's happy birthday to me, even if I didn't get to actually see it. I know it was there.

Anyway, if you can do Catalina, go for it. I liked it a ton. Also best birthday ever, and this year's going to have to step it up.

Update: Nick couldn't add pictures in comments so he's "forcing" me to add this:

The first step is admitting you have a problem

When I got back from Nashville, I was tired. I'd been to five states in six weeks, I'd just gotten through Hotelpocalypse which seriously was stressful, I was getting cranky that I kept missing out on time with my friends because I was traveling, and I'd hit the point where since my next trip isn't till Memorial Weekend, I just wanted to stop thinking about travel and just take a break.

That night a friend in Alabama pointed out that again I'd been to the south and hadn't been around to see him. So Nick and I kind of started talking about a road trip through the South over a few days.

Then I booked my flights to California.

Then I started talking to my mom about our family road trip in May.

Then we placed our first Disney reservation.

Then I paid up for my part of a house I'm renting with some friends in Michigan for a weekend.

Then I accidentally bought my tickets to get to Disney.

I am a crazy person.

I have reached the point where my schedule can't accommodate too much more for a while, though. In May we road trip to Pennsylvania, June is Michigan, July is LA and SDCC, August might be Portland if things pan out (and if any of you are reading this, chop chop on dates!), October is Disney. Somewhere in there there might be the South trip, and possibly we might do South Dakota. If the opportunity comes up I'd like to visit my dad in Florida or go to LA during the winter while I'm suffering from seasonal affective disorder and having panic attacks about snow. But I've nearly booked up my year, and then I need to start planning for Alaska 2017, and I'm determined to get out of the country next year. I've reached the point where people ask about my weekends assuming I went somewhere, and when I tell them my schedule I get fewer people looking at me like I'm crazy and more "get it, girl" type reactions. I think that's a good thing?

All I know is I think this has become a habit, which would make me happier if I didn't check my travel account standings about twice a day.

180 Days

I've talked before about how planning for Disney is an Experience in itself. Well, part of that Experience is that 180 days out from your trip, you're able to book dining reservations for your stay. Guess what day it is!

I don't know how much I like this feature of things. My philosophy of vacationing tends to be more like "Sure, go ahead and make a plan, but it's going to get obliterated before you even get there." That just seems to be the way things go. Maybe your flight ends up delayed or you're just too tired to do a certain thing one day or the timing isn't what you expected it to be or you just changed your mind. Have ideas of what you want to do and how long it takes to get there and what's around it and all, because that's just good planning, but don't expect that how you imagine everything to go is the way it's actually going to happen. And Disney sort of makes you do that. I mean, you could always not book any reservations or Fast Passes or whatever, but it's also the best way to make sure you don't have to waste time in line for hours and if you want to just stop in at a sit down restaurant at Disney World because you feel like it, it's not going to work out so well. It's very weird to be someone like me and to have to kind of plan a vacation out this far in advance. If we're going to go to the Halloween party then we want to get to the park at this time and be somewhere else before then, and what park won't be completely crowded on Saturday in October, and where should we go this one day if we're going to go to a character breakfast here? I sucked at word problems in school but rule at them when it comes to vacation, but I don't necessarily want to have to do it that way.

Which isn't to say that I wasn't geeking out on the treadmill this morning when I saw our reservations on the My Disney Experience app, and I'm sorry to the neighbor that I think I scared with the noise I made. I may not love how we have to do it, but man, does it make it feel more and more real.

Meesa going hooooome!

Yep. I just quoted Jar Jar Binks. Fight me.

I waited out the flights to California as long as I could, but finally this week started to accept that prices were about as low as they'd go. Even the sales emails I'd get excluded the dates I'd be flying. I could probably wait for a low last-minute fare, but for something like SDCC, which is already a stressful thing, I didn't want even more uncertainty. So I sucked it up and went looking.

The prices out to LA aren't terrible, actually. Coming back from San Diego on a Monday was the pricey part. ($241 one way, if you're curious.) They go down if I would fly out on Tuesday, but that would mean spending another night in a hotel and that negates the savings. Once I got that, I started looking for flights to LA, which ranged more in the $160-200 range. The cheapest was Frontier, which I've never flown, and I started booking. But besides all the pop-ups telling me I could sign up for this deal or that deal, when I went to select my seat, every single one required more money. The cheaper ones were an extra $12, then there was $24, and I think it went a little higher. I selected the $12, and then they wanted me to add my baggage fees. Now, I'll probably need more than a carry on. But I don't know that for sure three months out. They also wanted $30, noting that the price at the airport was higher, but I couldn't find that price. So now that $164 fare is $206 and I'm not feeling confident, and I got "don't fly Frontier if you can avoid it" warnings when I mentioned it. So I started looking at Virgin, which I know I love. At $184, they do have options to pay more for a better seat and you can add your bag fees there, but you don't have to. I paid that now, and when I get to the airport, IF I need to check a bag, the total will come to $208. I picked the better deal.

And I am so excited to go! I wish I had more time because there's places I want to go and do many people I need to see, but I can manage it. It feels great to send messages to people telling them and seeing their reactions, and while I'm from and currently live in Chicago, LA is very much home. I think that totally warrants some Jar Jar.

We drove ten hours today. Hi.

On one hand, Nashville was awesome. On the other hand, let me tell you how draining it is to leave the hotel before 9 am and get home at 7. If you've never done a big road trip, you might not think sitting in a car is that tiring.

It is so tiring. Being bored is tiring. If you're in the driver's seat, then you have one thing to focus on pretty much the whole time, and that is boring. If you're the passenger, you don't even have that, and that's boring. So while we'd planned on making a couple stops on the way back, that didn't really pan out because we just wanted to get home. The most we really did for fun was do a driveby of Dinosaur World, which I figured would be like the Cabazon Dinosaurs, and I think I was right? We got up closer and it's weird to say that they didn't look as authentic, though. They were smaller, and it looked more like they'd been colored with spray paint, and I wasn't hugely inclined to spend $19 there.

It was also part of a section of roadside tourist traps in Cave City, KY. There was a large strip mall-looking Olde General Store, something called Guntown Mountain, a haunted hotel, and one of several cave exploring things. You see a ton of billboards for things like cave explorations and zip lining underground, which if we had more time, I probably would have been all for it. My boss' daughter just did it and they seemed to enjoy it. But if there's one thing I'd definitely want to do next time, it's Kentucky Down Under, which is an adventure zoo where you can hang out with several different animals and pet kangaroos and such. I'm iffy one some of these places because I'm all for animal refuges (one will get excessively pimped when I get around to writing it), and I like to be reassured that they're being taken care of well and not being exploited, and I know some of these are not on the level, but this is one I'm hopeful about and want to check out.

Aside from that, our stops were at gas stations and rest stops, which got more frequent the more tired we got. And then when we got to northern Kentucky it started raining and didn't stop until we got all the way back to my place. But I absolutely will not complain, because we also saw a car fire today, and no matter how tiring our drive can get it's good to remember that at least we're not that guy.

Anyway, safely home. Nick's staying the night here rather than driving even more tonight, and there's pizza and Star Wars and that's all that matters. Oh, and pajamas at 7 pm, because we earned it.

Currently: Nashville, TN

Oh my god, I love Nashville.

This is where we decided to go once we had to push South Dakota off for a few months, and it was a great choice. I don't know why I got it in my head to come here recently, but it did, and since it's seven and a half hours away from Chicago, it's really not that tough a drive. Nick came to pick me up after work, and after grabbing dinner to wait out rush hour traffic, we drove down to Indianapolis. As Chicago -> Indy is maybe the most boring drive I've ever done, especially fairly often, it was kind of nice to be able to do most of that in the dark where we weren't sighing as we passed yet another field of absolutely nothing. (I'm sorry, Indiana. Illinois is a boring drive, too.) Nick booked a decent hotel there, and we could sit down and actually plan what we were going to do in Nashville. Also, to book the hotel we're staying in tonight.

So, I have a system for looking at hotels. Rather than trying to get in the city where prices were higher, go about half an hour out. I go on Priceline, sort by price and go past one and two stars, because after a couple horrible experiences in one star hotels it's worth the extra $20 to stay somewhere that I feel I can sleep without contracting something. Usually you can find a good three star hotel for around $80, which split two ways isn't bad. Last night there were issues there, which was weird because I'd looked up prices in Nashville before and didn't have a problem. Then Nick remembered seeing something about the Walking Dead Walker Stalker convention, which was probably driving up prices. So let this be a lesson, kids: watch out for Walking Dead conventions. So I spent more than I wanted to on tonight's hotel but it's a good hotel so I'm not going to complain too much.

We started out around 8 am and got to be all nostalgic because the way we took through Indiana was the way we used to take to get to Cincinnati. Cincinnati was also my previous experience with Kentucky, because a) I had to drive people back and forth to the Cincy airport which is in Kentucky (don't ask me, I just work here), and b) the first time I went to Cincinnati I followed the signs for Cincinnati and accidentally ended up in the wrong state. But driving through Kentucky on purpose is super pretty. And being stuck in Chicago where it keeps casually snowing whenever it feels like it, it was so nice to see actual spring in the form of flowers and blossoms on trees along the highway.

Also, a note: Indianapolis is messed up when it comes to time zones, so we spent the night in Eastern. Which means when you get back through Kentucky and then Tennessee in Central, it kind of screws up your timing on getting to the hotel. But on the way there we saw a sign for the Andrew Jackson Hermitage, and (not for the first time ever) I said, "Wanna go to (this historical site on the way to the hotel)?" and Nick said sure, so we went. It's $20 for the basic tour, which gives you access to the very pretty grounds and the mansion, which is a semi-guided tour. There's no photography in the mansion or there'd be a lot of pictures here, but outside the house was another story. There were a lot of smaller buildings to check out, though at parts it was sort of uncomfortable? At one point inside the mansion someone asked how many servants there were to deal with the twenty guests per day the docents would talk about, and when we got to the slaves' houses it sort of felt like a slap, like, oh right, we're in the South and of course there weren't servants, and we're somewhere were people might casually call slaves that. In the museum at the house there was also a small thing on how the Native Americans sided with the British in the War of 1812 because they thought the British could protect them from land-hungry Americans, which... yeah. There's something about certain areas of the South, where they kind of shock you by acknowledging that this country's based on some pretty truly awful stuff, but I think it's good that they do make you face it.

Still, I definitely recommend it as a place to stop, and one of those things that seems typical of a Nick and Natalie Trip. And by then we hadn't eaten since getting breakfast at the hotel before leaving, and we were getting hungry. We decided to stop at the Steak and Shake nearby just to get something cheap, and we should have known there was a problem when we waited about five minutes before anyone even acknowledged that we were waiting to be seated. It was another five minutes or so before our server came over to get our orders. And then we waited for twenty minutes without drinks, without any acknowledgement that we were waiting. There were people waiting to be seated, several tables that hadn't been cleared, and no one there was in any sort of rush to get anyone through. The guy at the next table must've seen we looked bored because he told us that they'd gotten in nearly an hour before and were just about to leave before they finally brought the food over. I give servers a ton of credit; they work hard even though no one thinks they do, they don't get paid enough because they have to rely on tips but there are a lot of asshole tippers out there who don't think about things like that, you have to deal with the public all day, it's stressful... But this was getting to be above and beyond, and we were considering just leaving, but Nick gave us another five minutes to wait and see if they'd bring anything over. One waitress came over to ask if we'd ordered, we said we'd been waiting twenty minutes, and she walked off looking frazzled. A couple minutes later, we heard a woman holding an apron yelling about someone not getting a break all day and how dare they yell at her. When it didn't seem like we were getting any more drama or food, we left a restaurant for the first time ever. I'd have felt worse about it, but on the way to the car we saw our waitress on her way back from her car, sooooo I have a feeling one way or another someone lost their job today based on the yelling. We found a Shoney's near the hotel, where everytime she came over to take our order we got to be like, "But no seriously she looks just like Daisy Ridley," and where we got to reminisce about our childhoods when Shoney's was Wag's, so I'm not mad at that detour. It's also the only real food I ate the whole day, oops.

I will say, too, that aside from the workers at Steak and Shake, everyone we met down here has been amazingly friendly. People had no problem talking to us in lines or at bars or whatever, but it wasn't really intrusive. It was them trying to be helpful about something. We heard the word "y'all" about four hundred thousand times, and I'm not sure that's an exaggeration, but since I've been y'alling for years it was nice to hear it without people looking at me like I said something weird. The girl who managed the line to get into the Andrew Jackson house was two weeks removed from Texas, and I'm pretty sure she said it in at least half her sentences. If you bump into someone on the street, there's a lot of sincere "Oh, I'm so sorry!"s that happen. I definitely dig Southern charm.

When researching Nashville I decided I wanted to go to the Parthenon, which I hadn't even known existed. It's an art museum that's a copy of the actual Parthenon in Greece, complete with the Athena statue. I was dumb and didn't check the hours of operation, so we got there about half an hour after it closed. But we got to walk around there and Centennial Park, watching people walk their dogs and taking group prom and wedding pictures. Seriously, it is a huge prom location, apparently.

But it was a good stop, and then we drove ten minutes away to downtown Nashville, where we paid way too much for parking. In line at the Hermitage two women from West Virginia had warned us about the convention crowd (we saw no one and had no problems there) and the parking, where they undersold it and we paid $27, but they don't advertise the prices until you've parked and have to pay, which sucks. But it was worth it, because downtown Nashville is pretty great. We got there early enough that we didn't have to worry about crowds yet, so we could wander around some. We stopped in at a coffee and ice cream bar where the line was out the door most of the night, and stopped to look at cowboy boots at one of the many, many, many boot stores around. It's also a small enough area that all the places we'd talked about stopping and finding maybe on the way home tomorrow, we found by accident. We found the pedestrian bridge, which is a great spot to stop and take pictures, even though we only crossed halfway before going back downtown.

We also walked around for a bit trying to find a good bar. I'm sure there are plenty, but it was just late enough now that the crowds were getting bigger, and while we tried to get into Legends, it was already standing room only, and several other places were just loud, and I like being able to have a conversation with someone I'm hanging out with. So we found Rippy's across the street from Legends, and that was a good call. There's live music at pretty much all the bars there, but we found somewhere not too loud where the band played a lot of different music with a country twang, the drinks weren't completely ridiculous, and while I didn't think my whiskey sour had much alcohol in it it kicked in when we were on the way back to the hotel. Now, if I was out with my friends I'd have had more and probably insisted on checking out more places, but it's different when you're with your brother and also we have to get on the road early tomorrow for an eight hour drive home, so we were lame and called it an early night.

In short (after a very long post), Nashville, I love you, and I will be back.

Hotelpocalypse: The Return

Hotel emails started going out for SDCC today, and it is, as they say, a total clusterfuck.

What we were told was that we'd be randomized in the waiting room and then let in to select our hotels, and then what we got depended on either what time we were let into the room, or what time we hit submit on the form. Either way, you should have some idea of what you were going to get. Aaaaaand then today happened. Emails started going out around 10:00 CST, and we hunkered down to wait for ours.

It would have helped a ton if they'd let us know what the process was actually going to be. Or if Comic Con International ever once enforced any rules or policies they actually put down but let's be real, that will never happen. We were left watching Twitter and trying to figure out based on people's timestamps from Tuesday. Last year they did it by hotel, so while we were still waiting for emails at 8 pm PST, it meant that we were just in the batch that got the Manchester Grand Hyatt. There was no such organization today. There were people who'd gotten in very early on Tuesday who were getting hotels in Mission Valley. Someone who got ushered in to fill out the form without having to wait ended up at Town & Country. As the day went on and thousands of us went without emails, the more it sank in that they'd completely lied about how they'd done their process. People on Twitter would talk to OnPeak, the company doing the bookings, and get different answers, including that it was all done randomly despite what we'd been told up until that point. And once again, this is on a workday, leaving all of us freaking out throughout the day that we wouldn't have anywhere to stay for the vacation we'd already dropped a couple hundred dollars on.

One person in my group got Crown Plaza, which we think is in Hotel Circle. It's on the shuttle route, at least, so while it's not downtown, it's not the worst. Another one in my group, who got in very early on Tuesday, got Town & Country. That's about five miles away, but it wasn't that far a drive when we had to go last year, so okay. Then the emails stopped, and I'd gone from freaking out to accepting that this was what we were getting.

And then Sarah's mom, who'd helped us out by trying from another computer, got the Marriott Marquis and Marina, right next to the convention center. We got extremely lucky, especially since we've stayed there four times in the past. The rest of us got rejection emails, no wait list. We'd watch other people not get anything at all and tell Sarah to hug her mom again. I have friends who have first crack at the other rooms we got, and have our room already reserved.

I know some of my readers here are here for the SDCC talk, and if you didn't get a room, don't lose hope. A lot of hotels go up for resale. People try for rooms in groups, and if they get something then they give the others back. So there's still a chance. Keep an eye out, and good luck.

Finding hotels for my trip this weekend is going to seem so much easier now.

Hotelpocalypse: This is Why Mommy Drinks

Today was the general hotel sale for San Diego Comic Con, or as it's not-so-affectionately nicknamed, Hotelpocalypse. It's the most stressful part of the whole process, in my opinion. Where trying to get tickets is an event that takes up a few hours of your Saturday in the hopes of being able to go, there are plenty of ways to maximize your chances, and that part has never even been an issue for me since I've been going. (Getting everything I want is another story, but at least I get something.) With hotels, you can't really do that. In the past, at 9 am PST, everyone opened a link to the hotel request form. You filled out all the information as fast as you possibly could: contact info, your top six hotel choices from a list, dates of stay, the names of your roommates. It's first come, first serve, so if you couldn't do it in thirty seconds, you probably didn't get anything. And even then, you might not have gotten what you wanted. If you filled out things for six downtown hotels and couldn't get things in as fast as others, you might end up a few miles away, or still end up with nothing.

This year they decided to make things more interesting. Rather than crashing their servers by flooding the site at once, we were given a link to a waiting room, where at 9 am PST it sorted us in random order. It was also made more interesting because it was a workday. At least when they do the ticket sales, it's a Saturday. And while normally Hotelpocalypse is the most stressful minute of my year, it's a minute. Even if I had a ton of work to do, I could sneak online for a few minutes to type and then get offline. This worried me this year, because I have a job that can get super busy and Comic Con International gave us no information on how exactly the new system was going to work or how long it would take. I was worried I'd have to take my lunch at 10:45 my time in order to not be working, I worried I'd spend my whole morning keyed up when I had more important things to do... I typed a lot on an old practice form, trying to get my speed up. Anytime a screen changed I jumped. I warned my (thankfully cool) boss that she was going to see me crazy today, though she denied it. But at one point she came over to ask me a work question and then finished with, "All right, you can go back to staring at the screen now."

So how'd it go? Actually pretty good.

At 9 am PST the waiting room changed to the queue, where we were given numbers. I was 11232, which wasn't great but not as bad as some people I'd seen. My friends got in before me, and some were done before I even started, so that's good. And because the numbers counted down, I was able to do some light work while waiting for my turn and didn't have to take it as my lunch hour. When I got to the form, though, I did screw up a little. You choose your hotels by selecting from a drop down menu, but a lot of them have similar names. If you type "Westin," there's one in the Gaslamp district and one downtown, and so I'd have to scroll down to select the one I wanted. I also made the mistake of typing more than the H in "Hilton San Diego Bayfront" and it took every available H hotel and added it to the remaining spots on my list, which meant I had to remove several and then select what I actually wanted. So I didn't do as well there as I would have liked, but it could have been much worse.

Afterwards it sort of ends up like the SATs, where you and your friends text or message in order to compare where you were and how you did and try to figure out what this means for your chances. There's adrenaline pumping, so as always the best way to deal with that is to babble endlessly with likeminded people about what you all just experienced, as if you all don't already know. And now the next step is to wait until I guess Friday, when emails will go out telling us what, if anything, we managed to get and whether we have a hotel room for our vacation.

SDCC: the only vacation that really fucking makes you work to go.

One day (technically two) in Milwaukee

Being in the Midwest means you're accessible to a lot of other states. Because of this, Nick makes a thing of getting out to cities like Detroit and Indianapolis for Bulls games, since they're cheaper there and those stadiums tend not to sell out. (Sorry, Detroit and Indianapolis.) This weekend he had tickets to the game against the Bucks in Milwaukee, and when his friend wasn't able to go, said friend was awesome enough to give me his ticket. It should also be said that this was my second Milwaukee trip since November, so I will be combining stuff even though we did some pretty similar things on both trips.

It's about an hour and a half drive between Chicago and Milwaukee, and on the way you get to pass something that is so freaking Wisconsin it hurts:

Yep, Mars Cheese Castle! Which is not a castle made of cheese, but a building shaped like a castle that has cheese in it. It's kitschy and touristy and probably filled with Chicagoans on their way somewhere else, but they have some really good product. You can get cheeses, meats, wine, baked goods, spices, etc. I found cheap sea salt and jumped on that.

Also once I went there and put a cheesehead hat on my head and my friend said "You take that off," immediately.

Milwaukee itself is one of those small big cities, where you can run into traffic but actually find parking outside a museum on a Sunday. Because it's got a pretty kickin' museum! The Milwaukee Art Museum is gorgeous. The building is art.

That is the entry, which overlooks onto Lake Michigan. You get to the museum via a pedestrian bridge, and if you're lucky the wings on the museum will be up. The museum has wings, y'all. I also didn't think there'd be as much to it as there is, but there were four levels of varying sizes with a lot of collections of contemporary, European and American art. The docents there are apparently all awesome and had no problem with picture-taking, and there must've been a field trip or something because it was full of teens. There was a group of kind of loud, giggly girls who got called out by a docent, but instead of yelling at them, he said, "Want to see something cool?" A minute later we heard happy squealing, and the next time we saw those girls was in a teen room, where kids could add their own messages and drawings to a wall. There was some pretty good art up there! Go, young Milwaukee! There's also a section for kids, and while we didn't go in there, I can only hope it's the same deal.

After that we had a couple hours to kill, so we went to Sprecher Brewing Company. It's a brewery, where you can go on tours and see how they make the stuff, but their soda's really popular. I don't really like soda, I rarely drink it, but I bought a case of this stuff. (For around $22, if you're curious.) Also last time I was there I picked up a root beer cookie mix. Root beer cookies are surprisingly great. I was very sad they were out of the mix this time. I had my heart set on root beer cookies, dammit.

We had a while to walk around downtown Milwaukee, especially the River Walk. Last time we went we were going to the absolutely gorgeous Pabst Theater at night for a Guster concert and found that even on a Saturday night most things close down early. In the daytime, there are people around, restaurants are open, and I can find somewhere to pee if I really need to. Also it was pretty great being up there for a game. A lot of the people in the stadium were from Chicago so I didn't feel weird or out of place wearing my Bulls shirt out in an opposing city. In fact, when we came up on a group of guys also wearing Bulls shirts on the street, they spotted us in ours and gave us high fives. I just met a lot of great people out there.

And to wrap this up, the Sheraton in nearby Brookfield has the most comfortable beds I have ever been on, and if I could choose to live the entire rest of my life in one place, it would be one of those beds. The end.