Over Easter weekend my roommate & I took a short 3-day trip to Wisconsin and hit Milwaukee on the first day and spent 1 1/2 days in Madison before heading back to Chicago. I've been to both cities numerous times (especially Madison) but tried to see new places in each city to expand my experience.Unfortunately it was rainy and wet while we're in Milwaukee and there was quite a bit of construction on the roads so we didn't end up going out at night as we had originally planned. We also left Chicago later than we had hoped so we were rushing around all day to get to shops before they closed-- unfortunately we missed seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition at the contemporary museum but we still took picture in front of the amazing structure anyways!
The best meal of the entire trip was also our first meal-- Honeypie Cafe had an extensive beer/drinks list, delicious cafe food made from locally sourced ingredients and a cozy, vintage style setting complete with taxidermy and vintage portraits on the walls (see below).
Neither Adeline or I enjoy beer very much but since we were in Milwaukee decided we should try the specialty of a "beermosa", beer (New Glarus) mixed with orange juice. I tried some and it was surprisingly tasty! On the right you can see the rows of delicious cupcakes and pies.
It was difficult to decide what to order, in the end I settled on a duck BLT with a slice of banana cream pie for dessert.
Adeline's German chocolate cupcake above was so large she could only manage to eat half of it at lunch.
Again with the beer... Milwaukee is the beer capital of the Midwest so that meant we had to take a tour of a brewery. We decided to tour the Miller brewery as it's FREE and was close to the other neighborhoods we wanted to visit.
Unfortunately since it was a holiday (Good Friday) we didn't actually get to see the factory in motion but we did get the chance to see the facilities including the massive industrial kettles where they begin the process of making beer.
The warehouse/distribution center above was cavernous; below you can see the cave they used in the olden days to store and age the beers. Now it's just used as a tourist attraction, the girl in the moon sign is the brewery's logo.
The tour included 3 free samples of beer, we assumed it would be shot glass sized samples so we were shocked when they brought out full sized glasses of beer! A little worrisome as everyone had to drive from the brewery afterwards. We sampled MGD 64, their 64-calorie beer, that I found to be too light and carbonated. The second sample was Miller Lite and the third my favorite, a honeyweiss from Leinenkugel (a small Wisconsin brewery that was taken over by Miller).
We had a good time in the gift shop before the tour, the cowboy hats made of old beer cartons were especially amusing. The one I found surprisingly matched my outfit!
By the tour was over the Milwaukee Art Museum had unfortunately already closed but I wanted Adeline to at least see the outside of it-- the museum overlooks Lake Michigan and is meant to look like a ship (it even has flexible wings/sails that can flap). The iconic addition to the museum was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and was completed in 2001 (the museum has been around since 1888).
As you can see from the last photo it started raining by the time we were finished taking photos by the museum. Afterwards we just had enough time to hit two vintage shops on Brady Street and we ate dinner at Lulu's Cafe. We also went back to Brady Street for breakfast the next day so I'll be sharing those photos tomorrow.Right now I'm writing you from my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas... I'll be setting up blog posts to publish while I'm in the Philippines for the next 2 weeks. I'll also have wireless Internet access so will try to keep up with all of your blogs too!