memorial day weekend

And we spent two more glorious days in New York but it has been too long since then to write about that trip and so am going to tell you about our okie-dokie Memorial day weekend.

The initial plan was to drive to Niagara falls along with another couple- it is around 16 hours drive from here and I didn't find the idea too practical -so- convinced hubby to drop the plan. He did so half-heartedly and we instead took a route well known to us- we drove to Chica-gooooo! This change of plan happened at around 6 pm on Friday evening (crazy us!) and then we did our hotel reservations, packed our stuff hurriedly and started the journey.
The thing about staying in EP is that...it is all so beautiful, serene, blah and more blah but when it comes to travel, we have to add a good 30 minutes to the trip. This is not so bad when we travel out but...boy, does it get monotonous when we are returning back home. So we have nicknamed downtown Minneapolis as "the point zero". The number line for any journey starts and ends there for us.

For Friday night stay, we had made reservations at Janesville ( about 30 miles south of Madison). We planned to do some sightseeing around that area, but when morning came, it was raining badly and we could only head down south to Chicago.
We arrived at the Magnificient mile - walked by each and every fascinating shop and sipped a latte every hour. We were then off to Devon Ave - the South Asian shopping haven, for a "quiet" dinner. We only then realized that "quiet" canNOT be a word associated with Devon.
It competes straight-up with T Nagar Ranganathan street without losing any of the zing - whether it be the crowd or the noise or the merchandise. You can see hordes of women shopping gold like they do in Thanga maligai as if there is no tomorrow and the queue standing outside Saravana Bhavan is only more than what it is in T nagar. On this particular Saturday when we went, Patel was running special discounts like 4 maggies for 1 dollar and such- need I say anything about the rush now :)
We were totally beaten. We entered into one of the less crowded restaurants knowing that food was going to be bad (and yes, it was bad) but the items were priced less than half of what they are in Minneapolis and we didn't feel too bad about wasting.

The whole of second day we spent at Ohio street beach and Navy pier enjoying the sun.



We went around Chicago downtown and Millenium park a few times to check out the views and we were off to Palatine (where we stayed). The best part of our Chicago stay was having Caramel creme espresso at Oberweis . I did not know that having coffee made with organic milk was this heavenly.

Monday noon after having breakfast at Panera ( and coffee at Oberweis again :)) we left Chicago and reached Madison at around 3 pm.
It is a very small town famous for being the capital of the Dairyland state and of course for University of Wisconsin. We walked down the State street lined with restaurants,espresso bars and shops that reminded me of Dilli Haat and enjoyed the evening sun sitting by the shores of Lake Monona. We then headed back home and were in EP at 9:30 pm. This trip was tiring enough, I dont think we could have ever managed a 16 hr- 3day trip to Niagara. Now-back in sweet home!