#Travel // I Didn't Hate Cleveland

I didn't hate Cleveland.

 In fact I was actually really surprised how mildly entertaining it ended up being. We only dedicated a day of our month-long road trip around the Great Lakes to this city, thinking we'd just stop by and stretch our legs for a few hours. This was still only a couple days after leaving Niagara Fall and Toronto, we weren't expecting to see much until we hit Detroit.

 A lot of our trip ended up being like that, considering we didn't have much idea of what was in store when we rerouted from a trip out west to around the great lakes. Trading National Parks and Monument for ... uhm, a lot of woods and random, low-profile cities. Props to the National Shutdown. 

The best lesson of traveling our new route, was that places can really surprise you. We never once had to deal with inflated prices or obnoxious crowds of tourists and a lot of stops really surprised us with how visitor friendly they were. Cleveland is probably one of the best examples. I was expecting only to see an nausa-inducing amount of the horrible color scheme of brown and orange. Fortunately the city isn't as crazy with Browns pride and I was spared!

For most of the road trip, all we really spent money on was food and gas. The Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame was pricey, we knew that going in. We had no intention to pay the entrance fee, but decided at least a peek in the lobby would be worth checking-out. As you can see, we caved and forked over the $40 to marvel at all it's impressive innards.

This was definitely one attraction both Torsten and I were glad we splurged on. As I mentioned, we weren't planning on actually seeing the full museum, but once we were in, we stayed in... for hours. What was meant to be a quick stop ended up taking up the whole day as we watched old music videos and admired memorabilia of legends. 

We wandered the downtown a bit before stumbling into a food court, starrrrrving. We pretty much made a meal out of all the free samples on offer, but still dug into some good ole gooey, food-court "Chinese". We also soaked up as much of the WiFi as our phones could handle. 

On the way out of Tower City, we walked along the Cuyahoga River, counting the bridges along the way. The old steel and stone buildings lining the path along the river was strangely beautiful in an industrial way. The perks of having an engineer boyfriend is being able to see rusty eyesores in a positive light. 

As the sun started setting, we started making our way back to the van, passing through a massive hunk of inner-city green space, read: glorified lawn with fancy sculptures. 

We rolled out of town with a sky-full of colorful clouds and better impression of Cleveland than we'd ever expected. We continued the drive along Lake Erie, heading North to the one and only Motor City; Detroit!

Cheers!

#Travel // Buffalo

While admiring Niagara Falls, we crossed the bridge back into the U.S., where the rest of our road trip around the Great Lakes continued into Buffalo, New York. Like majority of the pit-stops on this trip, I had zero expectations for this city. I really had no idea what we were going to find here other than offerings of wings, which we surprisingly didn't even try! Also to our surprise, we ended up lingering a little longer than expected in this city! 

We rolled into town around lunch time, meaning we were hungry. I had read Buffalo was a cheap foodie's paradise and had restaurants-a-plenty on Allen street.  By the time we parked and started walking, we were basically starving, taking up the first local restaurant on radar. I don't have any photos, but I scarfed down a philly and I don't remember when Torsten got, but it was inferior and he somehow managed to haggle that we split and share our meals. He's sneaky like that. 

Our biggest impression of Buffalo was the...erm, unique architecture. The only city that has rivaled it so far for the most, we'll say, "interesting" city's architecture we've seen so far has been Rotterdam, and that's a whole other level of strange! I'll get to that in a few weeks if you keep up on the Euro road trip I just started posting about ;)  

We started off by checking out the City Hall and surrounding area. The City Hall itself was something. Torsten nor myself could decide if we liked it's strange combination of Art Deco with native accents. It was awkward, but not nearly awkward as it's neighboring City Court Building. One look walking into that building and you already feel like you're going to a penitentiary. The only sign of natural light possibly shining into the large, intimidating building were slivers of windows down the side. 

This building I was actually quite fond of, no idea it's purpose as we were just wandering around the vacant downtown at this time. I couldn't stop staring at the mirrored windows or intricate details covering the entire exterior! 

In typical Great Lakes road trip fashion, the day would not have been complete without a beautiful sunset over the water. We came just in time to watch the rowers return from the lake while their form was silhouetted by the last rays of sun. 

Before we got cozy in the van for the night, we had one last anticipated sight to see; The Peace Bridge. Best known for travel between the U.S and Canada... and of course it's color changing lights! We parked the van and walked along a sidewalk that goes under the bridge, admiring the transitions of colors and it's reflection of the rushing, and litter-infested, water. 

The next day we decided to check out the old war ships and submarine at The Buffalo Naval Park. Between it's museum and the ships, we spent houuuurrrs longer here than expected! One of my favorite parts was in the museum, where there were posters of old vets and their personal WWI and WWII stories. The ships and sub have a self-led tour that was more than we were expecting to see. They're even pretty generous about letting you climb around and get some interesting perspectives. As you can see, Torsten definitely had some fun with it! 

We'd only planned to spend a couple hours at the Naval Park, though it was already late afternoon by the time we left. It gave us just enough time to hit the road and enjoy the last few hours of daylight in this gorgeous Pennsylvanian State Park!

Up Next on the Great Lakes Road Trip;

Cleveland, Ohio

Cheers!