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| 48 Hours In Cleveland |
I am sitting in the breakfast room of the Hampton Inn at 7:00. It's not busy like Saturday because all the basketball fans have gone. We would like to head home today by 10:00, hoping to beat the snow of a couple of inches, forecast for around 1:00.
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| West Side Market |
Saturday was a really fun day, with lots of different excursions. My day started early with a couple of hours of drinking coffee and writing the blog. By 10:00, we were heading a couple of miles west to the West Side Market. It was busy as usual, filled with shoppers and people like us, out to enjoy the spectacle of an outdoor and indoor market. We were amazed at the abundance of produce available, with vendors busy selling their vegetables. When we went inside, I had to get a bratwurst, a tradition ever since we started going there in the 1980s, same stand, same family. We then browsed the market ending up buying a loaf of Athos bread because I spent five days visiting Mt, Athos and the monasteries in Greece back in 1972, one of the great experiences of my life.
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| The Grigoriou Monastery I Visited On Mt. Athos, Greece |
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| Mt. Athos Bread |
We then walked the area, checking out various restaurants and bars because we were coming back to spend the evening. Before lunch, we had to stop at another favorite, Farkas Bakery where bought three Napoleons for our dessert later in the day.
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| Can't Wait For The Napoleons |
We, then, ended up stopping at our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant, Nates, a hole in the wall, not much has changed in thirty years. We were waited on by the same waitress from years past and ordered the fattoush salad, pita bread, and hummus, all favorites. Once we finished lunch, we drove to the Cleveland Museum Of Art via Martin Luther King Drive with all the ethnic gardens, our favorite drive into University Circle.
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| Lot's Daughter |
We spent a couple of hours walking around the various rooms, especially the impressionists and moderns although we ended up in the Egyptian room as well. I looked for my favorite painting, Lots Wife, by a post-WWII German painter Anselm Kiefer and was lucky to find a docent who knew where it was and told us its relevance. It's huge, probably 12 feet by 12 feet, and represents the destruction of WWII and the madness of the Holocaust. The painting itself is slowly disintegrating, purposefully, and once it is gone it will represent the end of the German guilt. We also enjoyed just sitting in the vast new atrium, where they were setting up for a wedding reception of 400 people after the museum closed at 5:00. Wow. Below are four very different works we particularly liked.
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| Cleveland |
On our way back to the hotel, we drove through Little Italy and returned to our hotel. We sat in the lounge enjoying our Napoleons before going up to our rooms and watching the first half of the Chiefs game until 6:15. We then took a Lyft over to the W. 25, hoping to start our bar hopping at the Great Lakes Brewery but there was a long line waiting to get a table.
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| Beer and Potato Pancakes |
Ron suggested going to Hansa, a German bar around the corner and it was the only venue in the area that did not seem to be busy. We found seats at the bar, ordered our German beers and I ordered potato pancakes, the hit of the night, crispy and delicious, with sour cream and applesauce. Unfortunately, I had to share! Next door they had a German grocery and we were able to buy a loaf of Volkonbrod, another one of our favorites.
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| Nano Brew |
We then walked down W.25th to a bar we liked from our morning walk called Nano Brew. It was packed with mostly young people and the beat of throbbing, almost deafening music and we were lucky to find four seats at the bar, despite the crowd waiting to get a table. The beer gods were with us. We ordered beers, of course, a quesadilla and stoner fries, with chili, cheese, scallions, and sour cream, health food obviously. It was a good choice all around, great atmosphere, beer, and food,
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| Great Lakes Brewery |
We, then, went back to the Great Lakes Brewery and again were fortunate to find a table in the bar area. We had beers, a burger, and the most ridiculous cheese/meat plate. It was laughable and hardly edible. At least we enjoyed our beers and the ambiance of the bar. We ended the night at a wine bar for an aperitif, not getting back until 10:45, happy but tired and ready to head home on Sunday. We vowed to come back in the Spring.
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