A Weekend Away

We spent the weekend in Urbana-Champaign with our friends from undergraduate, B&R. It was a fun and relaxing weekend! The main activities: Eat, Play, Tour

Tour - We got a nice walking tour of the Illinois campus, it is quite pretty! We also used the nice weather to throw the football around a little. We also did a driving tour of the cities, I always thought it was a bigger area than it is for some reason. Combined, it is about 120K. My hometown, Duluth MN has 86K, within the city proper and more in surrounding areas, and in a way almost felt bigger tha Urbana-Champaign once I saw the downtowns, minus of course the giant University.

Play - We played a lot of games! DH is all time champion in Mexican Train (a domino game that is quite fun and I think I will be teaching to my family the next chance I get) and in Monopoly. I am all time champion in Poker (texas hold'em) and Phase 10, though DH is claiming my Poker title is invalid because he was not playing like he would if it were for real money. However, I think that my overall poker record is better than his, so I will still claim the title. Sorry B&R for coming into your house and beating you at everything. LOL. You can try and return the favor when you come to visit next, but we won't make it easy for you.

Food - Wow, did we eat. Saturday lunch we grilled steak and veggies, and it was amazing. So delicious and tender! Saturday night we went to Bayernstube in Gibson City, a very authentic German resteraunt that took my back. It even had the real german bread for the appetizer. It was so tasty. I have to say, it puts Columbus' popular German Resteraunt, Schmidt's to shame, especially for anyone who actually wants German food, and not just German-like food. Sunday we had a nice Jause, also called Abendbrot, this is basically a spread of meats, cheeses, and vegatables that is eaten in many European countries (including of course Germany and Austria) for dinner, as lunch is the big hot meal of the day. Then we went for frozen custard at a local place, which was quite tasty. Unfortunately it was too cool to walk around more.

That was the weekend, we came back home to five pets very happy to see us! Too happy really, I got horrible sleep last night due to a combination of (1)worry about the puppy having not gone before we went to bed (2) all five pets demanding attention at various points throughout the night (3) overheating and (4) bad dreams. It was charming! LOL.