Days 27 & 28 - Cleveland Rocks

Author - Grant (again...)
Days Started With Good Eating Intentions - 2
Days Ended In Pain From Being So Full - 2. We're doing the cereal diet (cereal for breakfast and lunch then a "normal" dinner) but the free reign on the dinner is not proving useful for two people with such appalling willpower.

Day 27 Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157610600665435/

Day 28 Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157610667888748/

Notice how I'm starting to combine multiple days in single blog entries? It's only a matter of time before they turn into weekly updates and then fade out entirely.

So we're still in Cleveland which wasn't the original plan but this place is really growing on me as the more we look for, the more we seem to find. In addition to liking the place, we also realised that Kate has two weeks to get to Washington for her flight back to the UK for her friend's wedding rather than the one week we initially thought we had. Some people lose keys, we lose weeks.

The only major attraction that this place boasts is the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of fame (yeah baby) but there's more to a city than quantifiable tourist attractions and Cleveland seems to have the unquantifiable stuff in spades. I think I am mre enamoured with the place than Kate but there may be a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, it's frickin' cold here (minus 4 this morning but that did rise up to minus 3.5 in the afternoon) but secondly, and most notably, it is possible to walk across the city in 15 minutes yet it houses three huge sports stadia. This doesn't just mean year round live sport; it means year round top flight sport as Cleveland is well represented in each of the major yank sports; namely the Browns are in the NFL, the Cavs are NBA and the Indians are MLB. Couple this with the fact that this is an industrial city which presumably is home to a majority of blue collar workers (this assumption is based on nothing more than the fact that the city is backdropped by steel yards and smoke chimneys) and, assuming this is anything like the working class north of England, the pride and support in the home teams must be something special. Or am I just romanticising sport and chimneys again? Either way, I like the feel of the place.

So after the hustle and bustle of thanksgiving, it's been nice to have a few days to relax and get back into the rhythm of selfishness at which we seem to be excelling. Our routine involves finding good walks for Molly, visiting the must-see sights of wherever we are and then eating ourselves into a coma and this portin of the trip has been no different. We took a ride about 5 miles to the east of Cleveland to find one of the state park walks that runs alongside of Lake Erie which turned out not to be such a great walk for Molly as it was next to a road hence to chance to come off lead but it was a great walk for us because it seems like we stumbled on the site of the houses for all the aforementioned mega-athletes. We saw dozens of incredible mansions with lake views which I can only assume cost tens of millions of dollars (see the attached photos for some of my favourites). One place had the gate house for rent which I guess would still have been way out of our budget. House gazing is my second favourite sport (after people watching) but my extreme jealousy has led me to teach Molly how to crap on demand - ha ha, that's one for the common man!

Day 27’s diet was going well until about 5:30pm when the two bowls of cereal had well and truly worn off. We generally have dinner sometime around 9pm but on day one of the diet we were sat in an Italian restaurant (chosen by being the closest one to us when a snow storm began) in Little Italy (every city has one) at 5:45pm slamming down two huge plates of stodge that are still lodged somewhere between my large and extra large intestines.

So the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame is officially the only museum in America that has captured our attention for more than an hour. I have been captivated by the Ham Museum in Spain and Kate could live in LegoLand (she's pushing the definition of "museum" to it's absolute limit there I feel) but we were literally thrown out of the R&R HoF when it closed. Apparently Cleveland paid through the rose ring to be host to the museum and it really shows as there are six floors of fascinating top notch memorabilia including the Four Tops matching purple suits, the jacket MJ wore in the Thriller video (you know, the red and black leather one), Elvis outfits and a cool Cadillac, Madonna's pointy boobs, Mick Jagger's frighteningly small pants, The Beatle's bog roll etc. etc. I particularly liked the written things like Elvis' bar bill or Jim Morrison's last will & testemant and we had a few "can you believe Elvis actually touched that door handle" moments. There were a few films to watch which ranged from short montages about how Rock 'n' Roll was seen by many (including the then president Ronnie Reagan) as an act of terrorism to more modern documentaries about how many greats have been taken early (Pete Townsend was close to tears when he angrily said "you might have lost your idols but I've lost my f"%$ing friends"). It's all done really well and the attention detail is impressive - even the guys collecting tickets all wear sunglasses and look like they've just finished a 6 month world tour with the Grateful Dead.

We were disappointed not to be able to flex our inner geek muscles as it turns out that the National Inventors Hall of Fame (note to museum managers, just call them Halls of Fame instead of museums and they will attract double the numbers...it's like putting heart worm tablets in cake) is closed for renovation. What else would two 30-odd year old adults do on a freezing Tuesday afternoon? Why, indoor glow in the dark mini-golf in Strongsville of course. The Sudanese manager of Monster Mini Golf was clearly incredibly grateful to see to see fellow two human beings (apparently this isn't peak season...no shit Sherlock) and hence he treated us like golfing royalty, including handing out a free round which Kate didn’t really fancy but I made us take because it effectively halved the price of the first game (will anyone ever understand my Northern mind?). There’s no sugar coating the result – with three hole-in-ones I handed out a non-mini mini-golfing lesson and I wasn’t shy about announcing it. Oh, maybe that’s why she didn’t fancy the second round?

After a disastrous visit to the gym (I got a stitch after 0.14 miles but battled on in pain), dinner tonight was courtesy of the latest of America’s Iron Chefs. Lola in central Cleveland is Michael Symons’s fine dining restaurant where are Lolita is Lola’s old venue in the outskirts of town. As Lolita does pig roasts on Tuesday nights, this was our chosen venue but what the dozy bint that took our booking didn’t tell us was that the piggy goodness was likely to be all gone by the time we took our 8pm table despite me specifically mentioning it when I booked. Disappointing but it did open up the rest of the menu and so we had pretty much the rest of the menu as we’d done the cereal thing again for the preceding part of the day. To start, Kate had a mozzarella and roasted garlic bruschetta which was actually pretty nasty as the garlic paste was bland and the whole thing was oily. But that was the only bad thing we got in 6 courses so an 80% success rate is pretty good – especially given the very reasonable prices (about $15 for a main). My starter was roasted bone marrow (one of the nicest things in the planet) sliced lengthways (a great way to serve it) on toast with picked onions which was incredible. The place is know for it’s home cured meats so we indulged in some prosciutto and lomo served with a house mustard pickle and pickled fennel and it was all excellent. Mains were meatballs in a tomato broth for Kate (loads of parmesan, lovely) and pork chop on red cabbage with a chick pea and arugala salad for me (this guy is known for his pork and quite rightly so after this – it was special). A usual, no room for dessert and, as usual, an early night for Kate whilst I stay up writing this being unable to sleep because of the mass of food in me. Will I ever learn? I hope not.

We’re leaving Cleveland and passing through Amish country tomorrow so unlikely to publish a blog thanks to the lack of internet, electricity or Hooters. Not sure what Hooters has to do with the blog but just wanted to spice up the blog with a bit of blue. I think it’s time I slept.