After some cocktails, we head to a nearby pizza place that gets good reviews. Transfer Pizza had good garlic bread, a really tasty Caesar salad, and a pizza that left us full and happy.
Afterwards, we head back to the hotel. It’s been a long day!
Cocktail Time!
We’ve come to Bryant’s cocktail lounge, which has been around since 1938. It’s an old style lounge, very dark, velvety, with jazz playing from a McIntosh sound system (Travis says its at least a $10K system. They don’t have a menu, but offer about 450 different cocktails. You give the bartender details of what types of things you like, things you don’t like, and they make something for you (or you can ask for something specific, but where’s the fun in that?).
travis ended up with something called a Candlelight, which was a peachy, raspberry take on a hurricane (except it came on fire!). Doug has a Buena Vista, which was sort of margarita-ish. Both very good
Travis’ Candlelight
We all scream. . .
We stop for Ice Cream after the game at Purple Door ice cream. It’s yummy. Doug has Graham Cracker and Peanut Butter. Travis has cinnamon. We both leave happy!
Play Ball!!
After breakfast, we head to Millar Park for a Brewers/Pirates game. We don’t care about either team, but it’s always fun to catch a game in a new ball field. First thing we notice is how many people tailgate once they get to the parking lot. This isn’t people who come early to tailgate. This is people who arrive 30 minutes before the game, park, quickly grab games, tables, chairs, food, and drinks out of their car, just so they can tailgate for 10-15 minutes. We also saw a game that looked sort of like cornhole, but played with darts!
The Brewers have a ton of things for fans to do once you’re inside. Doug wanted to do the big slide in the outfield (which Bernie, the Brewers mascot goes down when they score a home run), but it was the wrong direction. It’s also bobblehead day at the game. Doug took the Prince Fielder (who?) bobblehead (it’s free stuff!), but Travis wisely rejected his, much to the consternation of the woman handing them out.
Oddest part of the game was the guy in front of Travis who was “sexting” with someone while sitting next to his dad and two sons (we’re assuming it was his mistress based on content). It wouldn’t have been so obvious if he wasn’t using a crazy big font.
Weirdly, the Brewers don’t play Deep in the Heart of Texas during the seventh inning stretch. 😄. Instead we got “Roll Out the Barrel“ after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.
My bobble head - before one of the folks sitting near me STOLE IT!
The players in Milwaukee are a lot smaller than at home!
Doug has a text queued up and ready to send in case Travis gets rowdy.
They have sausage races at the game. Chorizo won tonight (he’s the one with the sombrero).
Just part of “Father of the Years” texts.
Breakfast of Champions (or not)
We ate at Don’s Diner which has lots of food that sounds delicious but may not be the healthiest. I’m not sure we would have gone in if we hadn’t read great reviews. They do breakfast all day, and most of their shakes are “boozy”. It’s a retro looking place. They even use some of the old upside down 7-Up in-cola glasses. Travis had biscuits and gravy. Doug’s had peanut butter and banana French toast. Both were really tasty but too much to finish. All in all, a successful choice!
Lots and lots of German food
For dinner we went to Mader’s. They’ve been around since 1902 so I guess they know what they’re doing. The Wiener schnitzel was really good. It was a lot of food. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a market to get drinks for the hotel fridge.
Once we got back to the hotel we sat on the patio with drinks from the bar. It’s nice to be able to sit outside at night in June! We noticed a really nice looking old building nearby and figured out from google maps that it was the Golda Meir Lower Campus, a magnet school in the Milwaukee public schools. We wondered why it was named after Golda Meir. As it turns out, she lived here as a child and went to the school back starting in 1906! Who knew.
Aaaaaaay!
Well, we saw this.
We’re off to a good start!
Our flight here was delayed a bit over an hour due to some mechanical issue. Once we got going everything was fine there.
Once we got to Milwaukee, Travis’ Avis preferred status really kicked in and they gave us a car that was filthy, had a bag of trash in the front seat, and had no gas in it. Travel is so glamorous!
We're off to Wisconsin!
Howdy! We’re off today for a weeklong visit to Wisconsin. People seem surprised when we tell them where we’re going. Travis has been up there a number of times for work, but never really got to spend any time seeing anything. Doug’s never been. It seemed like a good opportunity to get somewhere slightly cooler than Houston is right now. There are a number of things we’re excited to see. At the same time, it likely won’t be a super busy week, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to relax some.