Last Weekend

Yes, last weekend. No not lost weekend although we sure did eat and drink and stay up all hours walking all over Milwaukee to call our mini-holiday a lost weekend. We had such a blast least weekend. When we got back this week I was so busy doing paperwork and errands I didn't have time to blog. I had to catch up with my Shakespeare reading group. We are reading The Winter's Tale and the discussion is going awesome. I was not familiar with this play and it's turned out to be an excellent story with excellent poetry. Anyhoo...we've had a busy week since and I had hardly any time to get online. Above the photo is at The Comet Cafe in Milwaukee with Stagg eating a ginormous sandwich. Breaking all codes of human health this amazing sandwich is two hamburger patties with three jumbo onion rings and instead of hamburger buns it's set inside two grilled cheese sandwiches!!!! This place is wild. When you go to the Comet Cafe on a Sunday and order a beer you get free bacon!!!

Halfway to Milwaukee we drove to Tricia's parents place and stayed over. If you click here you can see pics I posted from her parents house from a day trip we made there in September. We had a lovely visit with her family. In the photo you cansee theiradorabale dog Moose with Stagg. Stagg didn't have any pets growing up and he is afraid ofdogs...but Moose taught Stagg that dogs canbe wonderful friends. Maybe Stagg will be excited to somedayget a dog. We have talked about getting a small dog someday and he now sees they can be great! We went to Thanksgiving dinner with Tricia's family and there were 56 cousins, uncles etc. Lots of food and company really impressive. Everyone pitched in a cooked all kinds of food. You can see some pics on Stagg's blog.

We spent a lot of time in the east end of Milwaukee.We were staying downtown but a lot of the places we checked out for food and cool bars and record stores were near Brady Street in Milwaukee. On our first night we took a taxi over to Brady Street and ate supper and then bar hopped all night. The east side has dozens of great food joints and awesome watering holes and all kinds of cool stores. I could really imagine living in Milwaukee after our visit. Sometimes when you travel it's a great feeling when you see what a new city has to offer the community.I thought there was a very artistic feeling to the city and very cool. A surprising amount of vegetarin restaurants and options on a lot of restaurants for vegans and vegetarians...which I think is a good gauge of a cities attitude and sense of adaptations to our environment. Almost every restaurant we went to had a menu that highlighted vegan options...which seemed very enlightened to me.

We went to a bunch of cool places including Hi-Hat Lounge/ The Garage, Regano's Roman Coin, Bullseye Record Store, Tallgrass Grill and The Safe House. These pictures are a cute neighbourhood deli called Koppa's Deli.

Koppa's Deli Koppa's Farwell Foods is a family-owned business operated by Ken Koppa, his business partner Peter Schmidt and their dynamic crew. This entertaining grocery store is home to the Fulbeli Deli which is well known for its out of this world sandwiches. The store has been in the Koppa family for over 25 years, and in those 25 years has established itself as one of Milwaukee's favorite treasures. The store and it's delightful staff continue to serve the neighborhood in a traditional manner while gradually changing with the times, however silly they might be. This website is our latest edition to show the modern world that we are here until 3000. May the Kraut be with you, the sausage serve you well, and the beer help you sleep. Thank you, please come again, and have a nice day!

I thought this was one of the cutest places...so I took lots of pictures. I have a little fantasy about having a joint much like this with organic foods and great stuff. They even had Juxtapoz Magazine in their inventory! How cool is that for a corner store? I lve the reading section and the Atari section. Another fantastic place to eat and shop in Milwaukee was Beans and Barley which is a medium sized health food store, with a counter and stools service as well as full dinner table service. All of us were impressed with this bright, pretty shopping spot for organic foods and serving all vegetarian food and locally made beverages. I can't think of any place remotely as awesome as Beans and Barley in Toronto or Chicago. More on the art gallery of Milwaukee tomorrow...