Spring Break Low Down
Mar. 24th, 2005 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnesshmmm why do I get the feeling the LJ cuts won't work or something....but I'll get it a try. Here's my spring break
I took my spring break in Madison, WI, just like I hoped to do. My big worry was some place to stay. I wanted very much to stay at the Canterbury Inn, a ‘literary bed and breakfast atop a bookstore’. At weekend rates, I thought it was too expensive for me (Mom was paying for lodging and food for me as an advanced birthday gift but I didn’t want to take advantage) the Clerk’s room (the smallest of the 6 rooms) was @110$ for one person but since I was there on the weekday I could get the ‘walk in’ rate for half price. Then other calls around town proved one thing to me: hotel stays are now insane. Holiday Inn, Best Western and American Inn all wanted between 120-170$ a night and they were all near the highway. So in the future, if the Clerk’s room is available, regards of time of the week, I’m staying there. It’s in the State Street District i.e. it’s where the action is.
Thrilled that I could get the Clerk’s room, I head for the Capitol, mapquest (and the Inn’s own directions) in hand. Now it’s a straight shot down 51, 220 miles of boredom since there’s not much on 51. I haven’t been south of Wausau since I moved up here (there’s no real need), which is where the closest mall is (over 80 miles from here). Just south of it is a little village called Kronenwetter but I missed seeing that second ‘N’ and was thinking WTH? It was a beautiful day to drive, nearly 50 degrees (and me cursing not bringing a lighter jacket), bright and sunny.
I always forget Mapquest can’t get directions right to save their souls (when mom was here it sent us in the opposite direction of the casino. The actually map showed it right but NOT the directions). Well they try to get you off of 39/51 in Portage. Now you CAN get to Madison that way but it’ll take you longer (I used to see patients in Portage) but it’s easier to go 90/04 back to 51, faster too. So I do that and head for downtown Madison remembering why I hate E. Washington st. so much (million red lights and traffic and suddenly disappearing lanes). Now keep in mind Madison has 5 lakes in it (well 3, the other two are south) and is built on a freaking isthmus so around downtown everything is one-way streets and it can take a long time to go around the ‘block.’ Mapquest’s directions take me directly INTO Lake Mendota (thank you very much Mapquest.) Luckily between my memory and the Inn’s directions I get back onto Gorham and to the Inn which had instructed me to double park (on Gorham, that’ll get you killed). It takes 5 times around the block just to cram into the freight-unloading zone, with the cops and a flatbed wrecker up the street hauling off illegally parked people. I dash in with luggage, toss it at them and say which ramp (that’s what they call parking garages) is your Inn parking. I flee and go park and walk back which is a couple of odd blocks (it’s hard to describe there are very strange roadways cut into that area).
The Clerk’s room is adorable. All the walls in the place are painted with Canterbury Tales scenes (hope my pictures come out). The Clerk’s room is kinda small but just so cute and the bedding is so nice and heavy. They even have fancy little English soaps (which for some reason tends to excite Americans since I think a lot of us still associated England with royalty and wealth) in the bathroom. I sit down to call Mom and tell her I made it and call my friend Becki so we can go hang and fill out my breakfast requests. Well Becki gets there fast (and somehow manages to find a place to park right in front of the Inn of course) and I pass on the complimentary wine and cheese figuring it was just some cheddar and a Dixie cup of wine.
Becki and I talk Harry Potter and go to the new upscale shopping center about 2 miles from where I used to live. It’s one of those open-air things that are coming back in vogue. It’s half empty and no one’s around. I did get some cool B-day gifts for friends though. Becki and I went to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner. Rip off. The chicken sandwich tasted good but one end had breastbone cartilage still attached and the other the chicken fat. Blech. And while Becki’s drink was good and full, my chocolate martini barely filled half the glass. I should have sent it back.
Then Becki and I went to her house. I hadn’t seen it before. She and Jason moved there after they got married. It’s a tiny little thing, one bedroom but the basement has all Jason’s DJ equipment and a bar so it’s cool. I get to meet Zachary, her new bunny and played with Zoe, the older one. Toby the aloof cat made his way onto my lap faster than Stanley the friendly one leaving Stanley to sit on the arm of the chair crying loudly because he wasn’t getting attention. Talked to Jason. Got to see the wedding photos finally and then we made a date to have lunch on wed. before Becki had to go to work. I went home and got in a little quality time with cable TV, oh how I missed my forensic programs.
The next day I get my coffee but no breakfast (turns out when Becki called me I somehow forgot to finish checking things and turned it in half done…moron). And I found out the cause of the depression in the days before. In the TMI department, let’s just say it was visit #2 of our special monthly friend because everyone needs two visits a month, damn cystic ovaries. So the community pharmacy I’m right next door to has wax goddesses and any kind of herb you might want but nothing practical so off to Walgreen’s I go but that’s okay since most of the shops around me are sleepy and don’t open until 10 AM.
That taken care of, I come home and cross Pinckney Street in the car and think, ‘hey that uber-expensive B&B that I had Angel buy out and turn into his home in my Post NFA ficathon story (Be on the look out for that over the weekend) is on Pinckney so let me back and take pictures once my car is parked. The State Street District I’m in features the Capitol of WI and the surrounding areas are filled with Painted Ladies and other wonderful old homes (all subdivided into apartments for the most part). And State Street itself is a little over a mile long with nothing but shops, bars and restaurants (about 60 of the latter). I go back to the inn, get the camera and take off for Pinckney since it was close, just a few blocks. As I start up the hill (most of WI is flat but the capitol area is rather hilly), two things occur to me a) it’s only 25 degrees when yesterday it was 20 degrees warmer) and b) Mapquest said it was a mile from one B&B to the other. I remember this fact when I’m already halfway committed to the walk.
I keep walking. I like to hike, yeah both my knees are shot, one so badly they can’t even operate and one ankle is a shattered disaster but I’m a walker. Even if I’m puffing like I’m dying thanks to my asthma, I’ll go, no matter if it’s up a mountainside, across the everglades or up a city street (though later my knee did go out and I nearly fell down in the street) So I make it out there, take my pictures (lovely lovely place!!) and am assaulted by Poncho the cat. This cat comes up to me crying and rubbing all over me. He follows me across a very busy highway so I pick him up read his tags and take him home. Luckily the apartment complex had an unlocked front door (Poncho didn’t have an apartment #) so I just put him in there. I got some pictures of the surrounding buildings and make the mile walk back to State Street.
I decide Himalayan for my first meal on SS. I go to the Chautara for mumari, mung bean patties in a yogurt mint sauce with eggplant relish. Yummy. I shop all over the place from pipefitters (yes it’s THAT kind of pipe) to Avol’s Bookstore (where I’m staying over), Shakti’s (new age), to Cat’s Meow Goth shop, where I fell in love with the Teddy Scares Bears (I want one bad), to the Soap Opera (where if you want to buy 12$/bar soap you’re in heaven and since it’s been there nearly 25 years someone must want it). They’re even making a huge arts center down there, the Overture. Neat, they needed it.
The one big detractor, all the panhandlers. Now there were homeless around, easy to spot from looks and odor but the panhandlers looked in better shape than me. (including the three college kids). The true homeless weren’t panhandling and if the panhandlers were homeless…no, they were far too clean.
After walking a good ten miles all told, I go in for some afternoon cable and that wine and cheese complimentary tray. I’m so kicking myself in the ass for not getting it the day before. It was huge, three kinds of those specialty crackers, smoked gouda, brie, spicy cheddar and asiago, tray of Greek olives, dried apricots, fresh grapes, almonds, fresh dates and a huge glass of merlot. Sadly all the cable shows were repeats of seasons I hated (S 5 of Angel, the season of NYPD blue where the writers were on coke, the last season of X-Files) so I tuned into CSI and remembered quickly why I hate that show so much. How many mistakes in basic anatomy can you make in one hour? I don’t know let’s watch CSI and find out. But it was better than the Eve-centric Angel eppy so…
After pigging out on wine and cheese, I lounge around for a while, tell mom I haven’t found anything for her yet (I did, it was at the pothead shop of all places), then go out for dinner and clubbing. I head to the Tutto Pasta: Trattoria bar e café. Looking over the menu, I decide that for 3$ more than the usual stuff I might as well go for the special and get the manicotti di pesce (manicotti stuffed with lobster, shrimp and scallops in a lobster sherry cream sauce), very yummy stuff (though the garlic bread pressed on the pancetta machine was blah). I then go to my old haunt the Angelic Brewery where the motto is “drink no evil.” Nothing like a brew pub and it was 2$ pint night. I sit down to an Angelic stout and wait for the music (though it’s also spring break for UW so the place is empty, empty empty) sadly, the full nausea crap that hits with that time of the month decided then was a good time to start so I have to call it an early night.
I get home in time to watch most of Veronica Mars. Anyone know anything about this? I can’t get it here but it looked interesting and intelligent (a surprise for a UPN show). Watch lots of cable and just relaxed. The water at this place is so hot I’d kill to have a shower with water like this at home. Loved my room, yes I did.
So I get the mango tea and a real breakfast on wed. Spinach and feta cheese quiche, a huge blackberry (lots of fresh blackberry) scones and strawberries. I get in some more shopping and buying nothing (I’m not really a shopper. I just like to look) Becki, sadly, isn’t into ethnic restaurants so I meet her at Perkins which is having buy one, get one free muffins (which I take home). I decide I’m not hungry (which I wasn’t) so she eats, we talk and then she goes to work. I head back down to State Street and I go to lunch on my own (well with my trusty ever present book) to the Himuli Chuli, a Nepalese restaurant (and to my NFA beta’s yes that’s the place I sent Buffy and I had ate same meal I gave her). I had momochas, which are vegetable dumplings (all the herbs selected and balanced for health if you buy into that) in a tomato lime sauce and a mango lassi (yogurt drink).
I go to A Room of One's Own feminist bookstore (read lesbian for the most part more so than feminist since those are not mutual exclusive things) where I used to like to go (oddly I used to have boyfriends who’d like to go there I think to prove women didn’t scare them when we so obviously did). I got a chai to go and got back on the road. Well, in those 220 miles there are only two rest stops both only 60 miles from Madison…that chai tea was perhaps not my best move. But I got home, had great fun, miss the place already and will scan the pictures in for everyone when I get a chance. (of buildings, what you think I’m gonna pose?) Oh and did I mention Madison was considered the Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest in the 60-70's. I don't really like cities but I love this one.
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Date: 2005-03-25 12:12 am (UTC)Sounds like you had a nice time, I'm glad, you deserved the break.
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Date: 2005-03-25 12:35 am (UTC)It was a great time. I really should rethink that career in travel writing...
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Date: 2005-03-25 12:25 am (UTC)Hope I'll get one, but I know I'll try to write for five days straight.
; )
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Date: 2005-03-25 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 02:59 am (UTC)Jeez.
; )
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Date: 2005-03-25 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 04:09 am (UTC); )
But only every once in a while.
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Date: 2005-03-25 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 04:37 pm (UTC); )
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Date: 2005-03-25 04:43 pm (UTC)And other times it's drunken crap
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Date: 2005-03-25 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-03-25 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-03-25 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 04:00 pm (UTC)