Hi there. :)
Moving to a different state has been on my mind a lot recently. I've been itching to pack everything into a car and move into somewhere completely different. A lot of this stems from still living in the same house behind the house I grew up in, meaning I have been in the same neighborhood for almost 28 years (minus the few years in Chicago and Merrionette Park, but MP is only about a ten minute walk away lol.)
Because a move like this wouldn't happen until sometime in 2022, I picked up the book Day Trips from Chicago by Elisa Drake to plan some Saturdays or weekends doing things we wouldn't have ordinarily thought of.
Our first stop was Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I have been to Milwaukee once previous to see the Front Bottoms and I didn't see any appeal to it at all, but I hear people talk about how much they love Milwaukee often, so we thought we'd give it another go.
Our driving factor behind the trip was trying Adam Pawlak's restaurant Egg & Flour. He was one of my favorite contestants on this season of Hell's Kitchen, and with his pasta being so close to home, we couldn't pass it up.
I ordered the pasta of the day and it was so good. Like, melt in your mouth, totally taking advantage of being in the cheese capital of the world good. Topped with tomatoes and crispy Parmesan, this is a dish I'll be thinking about for a long time.
One of our favorite things to do around here on any given day is go shopping for records at any local shops, plus larger distributors like Disc Replay and Barnes and Noble.
After food, our next stop was Bullseye Records. It was really nice inside, though not large. A lot of the reviews online raved about it, and maybe as a person who only collects recreationally, I didn't find it overwhelmingly impressive. But, it was really cool and the guys working there were super nice. I copped Death Cab's Codes & Keys vinyl before we left to get coffee,.
We parked near Egg & Flour (which, Chicago friends, was only about $3.00 for the entire day) and walked to the record shop and to this little coffee shop from there. The neighborhood this shop was in was one of my favorites we found ourselves in, minus the next neighborhood we drove to. The coffee shop is called Rochambo and it would be a pleasure to have this as my local shop. The barista was so kind, the atmosphere was comfortable, yet fresh, and their coffee was delicious.
The other record shop we planned on visiting was closed due to CoVid, so we headed to our last stop of the day, Milwaukee Public Market. Earlier this year, I had been talking about a trip to Seattle which evolved into a different trip you'll read about later, but this is how a picture a small scale Seattle Public Market.
It's a lot of meat, fish, and cheese, which as a vegetarian offers incredible cheese options. But, I left with a box of Macarons (which lasted to the parking garage.) This was my favorite neighborhood we spent a bit of time in. The buildings were beautiful, it was old but still built up. It was reminiscent of the architecture in Chicago, but on a smaller scale.
Some honorable mentions we thought about visiting, but didn't were:
The Milwaukee Domes: By the time we got to them, they were sold out for the day. But, there was a farmers market inside where we bought pies!
Milwaukee Art Museum: We mainly came up here to record store shop and eat pasta, but this seems to be the highlight of the town. Every time we looked for things to do, this kept showing up. I think we would have needed an overnight trip to see more.
In terms of our timing, we left Chicago around 9 and arrived a little bit before 11. We were back in the area by around 5pm. (We did stop at another record store when we got back in the area lol.)
Something I want to work on for future day trips, especially ones that revolve around spending time in a larger city like Milwaukee, is devoting more time to it. Truly a breakfast, lunch, and dinner kind of day to try more things out and see more neighborhoods. That just makes me more excite for future trips.
If you're in the Midwest and you have any recommendations, let me know. :-)
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