Cleveland Rocks! Part 1

As those of you who are my buddies on Facebook might have seen, Chris and I recently joined my Mom's side of the family for a long weekend in Cleveland, Ohio to attend the wedding of my cousin Ashley to her love Brandon.  This was fantastic, as it allowed me to combine several of my favorite things all into one trip: traveling, family, weddings/receptions, and most of all, PLANNING!  See, since there were going to be 7 of us (Chris and I, Mom, Jim and Leigh, and Uncle Jim and Aunt Kim) traveling from different areas, and we all wanted to stay close to one another plus see the sights of the city while we were in town, I got to have a blast finding a place to stay and organizing where we'd visit and eat.  Each one of us seemed to take around 8,000 pictures, so I have no idea how many blogs I'll end up with about the trip - I may have content until Christmas!  Hooray!

Let's dive right in.  Most of us started to the airport early in our respective cities - Jim and Leigh nabbed a morning flight out of Tampa, Uncle Jim and Aunt Kim traveled out of Orlando, and Chris and I woke up at the grand hour of 3am to catch our 7am jaunt out of Orange County.  For her part, after driving Jim and Leigh to the airport, Mom went home, then headed back just a few hours later for her own flight.  Chris and I planned to be on the early side of things; see, the folks who live in Orange County get really pissy about noise issues near the airport, so flights have a strict curfew.  7am is the earliest set of departures out of John Wayne, so security can sometimes back up for these morning flights.  We got to the departure side of the terminal just before 5am, and of course, breezed right through everything, chilling out for around 20 minutes before our breakfast destination, Javi's, opened at 5:30am (Javi's was good - it's the littler, airport version of Javier's, which is a delicious place - we had a breakfast burrito and chilaquiles, green, respectively.  You're welcome).

Our flight out of Orange County was right on time, and as we were laying over in Denver, Jim and Leigh were arriving in Cleveland, checking out their rental car, and heading to the VRBO house we'd reserved for our stay.  It ended up being a great find - it was three bedrooms total with four queen beds plus a hide-a-bed and a massive separate couch.  It fit all of us quite well, even if some of the items we expected it to have didn't appear; if your checkout instructions say to load the dishes in the dishwasher and run it, one might expect a dishwasher to be on the property, yes?  I'm just saying.

For lunch in Denver, we hit up the Coors Light Silver Bullet Bar and Grill, which was fine as those things go.  Fresh food, tasty sandwiches, and a selection of local beer on tap.  They also sat us right next to the condiment station, so we were set on whatever we might need to go with our meal:

Look at all that hot sauce!

I initially planned to swipe this bottle of Tabasco for Risa, since she's a huge Broncos fan, but then I realized that I really didn't know who has been licking it, and since I like Risa, I decided to send her a picture instead:

Making smart choices

Our flight from Denver to Cleveland was normal, too, and we passed the time reading (me!  How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny, a great recommendation from Rebecca) and studying (Chris!  Lame!).  Uncle Jim and Aunt Kim waited for us in baggage claim, and once our flight landed, we joined them for the shuttle ride to the rental car counter.  The shuttles were completely full, and as it turned out, we were one of the last groups on ours; as Uncle Jim and Aunt Kim hopped aboard, the shuttle driver (not much younger than them, if at all, I should point out) very loudly uprooted two other passengers for UJ and AK, crying aloud, "THESE SEATS ARE RESERVED FOR SENIORS!  GET UP!  LET THEM SIT DOWN!"  While UJ and AK would likely have been fine standing, as UJ mentioned later, "I sure as hell wasn't going to argue with her [our driver]."  I concur.  She was petite, but feisty.

After bypassing the rental car counter line (thanks, Hertz Gold level program!), we picked what we thought was the best of the cars on offer, a bronze-ish Toyota Corolla.  Everyone hopped in, we fired up the GPS, and we headed to the VRBO, where we greeted Jim and Leigh.  After unloading the car and getting our bearings, it was off to the local grocery store, Dave's Markets, to buy food for the next few mornings.  While we'd be eating our lunches and dinners out, we figured that since we had a full kitchen, we should take advantage of the time it would take 7 people to get ready each morning and make breakfast each day, both cutting our costs and allowing us to have at least one meal where we knew what we'd be getting.  

It was back to the VRBO to unload again (Chris and I have to admit to being fixated by the number of plastic bags we acquired - we don't have those in CA anymore, and since each item seemed to be double-bagged, including each gallon of water, it was pretty amazing.  Somewhere, a sea turtle cried), and then Jim and Leigh headed to the airport to get ready for Mom's arrival.  UJ, AK, Chris, and I hung out a bit more and unpacked some (hanging up wedding clothes, mainly), and then we made our way to the West Side Market area of town to Great Lakes Brewing, where we'd all be eating dinner that night.  Although it was in a downtown-ish area, we easily found a parking spot - too easily, as it turned out (cue dramatic foreshadowing...).

Mom arrived on time like clockwork, and after being seated for only a few minutes, she joined us with Jim and Leigh.  We had a great time trying out their different (and lovely) brews, and our food was great overall (I'd seen their cheese soup mentioned on Michael Symon's Burgers, Brew, and Que show, and it was absolutely delicious.  Be sure to get it with a salad, for the sake of dietary karma balance).  

Aunt Kim and Mom on the patio

Leigh and Jim

The fancy beer cabinet at Great Lakes

Jim ended up not feeling great (long day of travel and all that), so he and Leigh paid up and headed out about 30 minutes earlier than the rest of us.  As we headed back to our superb parking lot, Chris happened to go, "where's the car?"  At first, I thought he was kidding, but when we looked closer, we realized why so many spaces were available in this particular area.

Um, shit.

So yeah.  We didn't read the sign, and they towed our car.  Which is lame.  Apparently, the Sherwin-Williams store on this corner really needs their parking lot empty while they're closed.  Anyway, this was obviously our fault, so we called the number to see how much this would be costing us - although the numbers were right there on the sign, the fee was a bit higher: either $140 to pick up the car that night (an "after hours fee" was added on, even though the folks were still there, answering the phone) or $120 the next morning.  Given that we had another car in our group and it would be cheaper tomorrow, we called Jim and Leigh, asking them to come get us; since Jim was feeling sick in bed, Leigh did us a solid and came to pick us up, and all of us headed back to the VRBO, cramming six people into a Chevy Impala (not that hard, truth be told).

While we were speaking to the folks on the phone, we witnessed firsthand their diligence in this arena.  This happened while we were there:

As it turned out, the lady with the SUV was just across the street, so she came running back before her car was towed off.  By now, Leigh was there, so it was back to the VRBO and off to bed!

Later!

Amy