Category Archives: Travel

Illinois at Ohio State

Panoramic view from my seat for the Illinois-Ohio State game.UntitledUntitledUntitledUntitledUntitledUntitledUntitledUntitledUntitled

This past weekend Julie and I headed to Columbus for the Ohio State – Illinois game which the Buckeyes cruised to a 52-22 win.  This is the first Ohio State game I’ve gone to since the 2010 Miami game.  We were supposed to catch the Penguins – Blue Jackets game on Friday but alas the NHL Lockout continues.  This is the second time that I’ve seen Ohio State go to 10-0 at home, the previous time being against Minnesota in 2002, both games were blow outs.

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Side Notes:
* Most of these photographs were taken by Julie and the full set can be found here.
** On Friday we stopped by campus to checkout some of the new buildings including the Ohio Union, The William Oxley Thompson Library and we got the grand tour of the RPAC facility.
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*** We did some beer smuggling along the way.

New York – Fall 2012

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View of the World Trade Center memorial from the hotel bar -This past weekend Julie and I headed to New York for some baseball and family dinners. So I took this opportunity to check out a couple of places for the first time. We got into town Thursday afternoon and stopped in Astoria for Greek food before heading to our hotel. We stayed at the World Trade Center Hotel because it was the cheapest 4-star hotel we could find on Hotwire. The location isn’t bad (it’s close to public transportation) but once we hit Saturday it was tourist nightmare. Although, when we’d return at the end of the night, the area was a complete ghost town. The view from our hotel window overlooked the 9/11 Memorial which is part construction zone and part tourist attraction. All very bizarre.

Thursday night we went to Upstate Craft & Oyster Bar in the East Village before meeting up with some of Julie’s hockey girls at Blind Tiger whose taps were recently taken over by Sierra Nevada. Upstate was a game time decision as we were looking for something not quite a full-on meal since we had a late lunch. It was great. They had a serious beer list and we ordered Little Neck clams which you can have steamed with the beer of your choice. I stuck with the Hop Crisis by 21st Amendment which is now officially my favorite IPA. Really, I can’t recommend this place enough. Blind Tiger was wall to wall people but they had a huge beer selection and a ton of Sierra Nevada which I’ve never even heard of.

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Friday, I pretty much had the day to myself before heading out to Forest Hills, Queens for Dee’s lasagne. We made sure to get Julie a NY style bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and then I headed to the Morgan Library and Museum for the Churchill: Power of Words exhibit. The exhibit was great but the layout, staff and lack of information bothered me. I spent 20 minutes walking around before I could find the exhibit. I had no idea the library has three Gutenberg Bibles and I completely missed them. Just a lot of stuff I missed that I don’t think I would have if the place was better organized or the staff was more inviting. That being said, I was the youngest person at the Churchill exhibit by about 47 years and I nearly witnessed two octogenarians in a cane fight over a bench seat.

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After the Museum I went down to Madison Square park for the food stands at Madison Square Eats 2012. Literally blown away. There were probably more than 20 vendors, everything from BBQ, Mexican to Asian food including desserts and a couple pop-up bars. I went with the Lobster roll from Red Hook Lobster Pound, Connecticut style. It beat the hell out of waiting in the hour-plus line at Shake Shack. I killed the rest of my afternoon at the Old Town Bar which is one of the oldest bars in the city being in continuous operation since 1892.

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After dinner at Dee’s, Julie and I headed back into the city and met up with Jim at Top Hops which is a craft beer store that has a bar. Basically you can pull any beer from the large bank of coolers and either make your own six pack or drink it there. Massive selection. I wish I had more time to really methodically go through the coolers.

UntitledUntitledUntitledAfterwards, we headed to Fraunces Tavern which is probably one of the more historic bars in New York City. General Washington bid farewell to his officers just days after the final British troops had left following the end of American Revolution:

‘With a heart full of love and gratitude I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.’

Fraunces Tavern also lays claim to the best Porter in the world. It’s definitely up there. The building is an amazing sprawling space with several rooms and multiple bars. I could have spent 8 hours there without any problem. It’s up there with McSorley’s in my book.

Saturday we headed to Citi Field for the Mets – Marlins game. More on that over at chicagometsfan.com

A long weekend. A lot of ground covered. I might be getting too old for this.

Lakeside Michigan

And @julierubes says we never go to the beach -Untitled
This past weekend Julie and I headed up to Lakeside, Michigan to get away for a couple of days. We’ve talked about going up to Wisconsin or Michigan this summer and after doing a little research we decided to go with with Harbor Country Michigan. It seemed closer, less popular than most of the places in Wisconsin we’ve heard of and probably less traffic. Plus we’d get to drive through scenic Gary, Indiana.

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The town we stayed in, Lakeside, was out of the way of the main tourist towns in the area. We stayed at the Lakeside Inn which sits above Lake Michigan and has direct access to a private beach on the lake via a staircase down a ravine. The Lakeside Inn is a restored inn dating back to around 1917 for it’s current structure of 31 rooms. The amenities are circa 1920’s plus Air Conditioning and WIFI which is about all I need to survive.

With the lake being so close we did about three trips to the beach. The water was perfect and it wasn’t crowded at all. If we go back I will be grilling there. We did try to some of the state parks to see their beaches but they’re all Pay to Play. So we never really went through with the paying and would just head back to our beach. At any one time there probably wasn’t 40 people within 300 yards us on the beach. There was a serious thunderstorm Saturday evening before we headed out to dinner but we were able to watch it pass with a couple of beers in hand while sitting on the 100 foot porch at the inn.

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One of the stops we wanted to make on this trip was to hit Greenbush Brewing since I had their beer at this years Baconfest. In addition to Greenbush a coworker of mine recommended we stop at Shoreline Brewery in Michigan City on our way there. So nearly 50 minutes into our trip we stopped at for lunch at Bartlett’s and then spent a couple hours at Shoreline.  I really liked Shoreline’s beer selection.  The knock I’ve read is that their beers can be too easy drinking which I think is amusing.  Yes their Scottish Ale, Beltaine, was the lightest Scottish Ale I’ve ever experienced but their Pale Ales were both great (Benny’s and Don’t Panic English Ale).  Also, if you’re into blueberry ales their Stella Blue was perfect.

Greenbush I was a little disappointed in.  They didn’t have the two beers I really enjoyed at Baconfest: Anger and Rage.  I guess this is part of their deal where they’re always changing what is available and even the taste of each beer.  For example I had their Pale Ale Closure only to be told by a local that if I come back in three weeks the beer will be completely different.  I guess this is a good thing for your local brewpub which Greenbush is but it makes it difficult for me to get my head around the fact that I wanted the two beers I had and they just didn’t have them.  The more I think about this, it just seems that when they came to an event in Chicago they just showed up with three beers, a seasonal, a specialty and probably one of their flagship beers.  Which makes sense, I just happened to really like the specialty and seasonal which the brewery didn’t have the one time I was there.  Ok, I’m done complaining.

I really did enjoy their Brother Benjamin which is a double IPA and Distorter Porter.  In addition to this, Greenbush has an awesome Mug Club.  A one time payment of $40 gets you the following:

  • A 20-ounce, numbered mug that hangs above our bar for your use only
  • 50 cents off each and every imperial pint (yep, 4 more ounces!)
  • Half off pints all day Monday
  • $2 off growler fills all day Wednesday
  • Invitations to members-only events (exclusive barrel-aged beer tastings, for example)

For $40 that’s a hell of a deal.  Shoreline had a great deal as well but it was an annual thing, though their mugs varied in size which I think is just amazing.  Greenbush also had some great looking food but alas we stopped there after dinner.

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In addition to the two breweries we did some wine tasting at Round Barn Winery’s tasting room in Union Pier, Michigan. I’m not a big wine taster but lucky for me they also brew beer and they have a tasting room dedicated to beer as well. Their beer wasn’t anything to write home about, I think I liked their Cocoa Stout the most.  Their beer was really expensive for some odd reason.  It was much cheaper at the grocery store.  We ended up buying a couple of bottles of wine and passing on the beer.

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One of the better meals we had all weekend was at Soe Cafe in Sawyer, Michigan. We also tried the Swedish bakery that will remain nameless. Probably the best idea we had all weekend was to stop at Oink’s Yogurt and Ice Cream Shop. The place was busy but efficient at getting a cone and it was great.

Side Notes:
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* On our way back home we stopped at Shoreline for a growler fill and then had lunch at the Rolling Stonebaker pizza truck near the Indian Dunes. The pizza was perfect and I wish we stopped there on the way up as well.
** I used the June issue of Chicago Magazine to pick many of the destinations.