Day 2: Lunch is OVER

The drive from Iowa City to Madison was really pleasant, low traffic and nothing like the drive from Little Rock to Oxford. I think I kept my eyes closed on that entire drive, just imagining the thousands of semis swarming around us like paparazzi. Iowa is much more deserted, and therefore, lovely. I had printed off directions from Google Maps and they continue to be as unreliable as ever. To get from Iowa City to Madison, they led us to turn into a factory off road, drive along a field, find 62nd St. hidden behind a dumpster, and then rejoin traffic on the same road that we had left 5 miles earlier. The only way I realized that we were even back on the right road was because the Semi we had been following had been graffittied with a giant "WOW" across the back end. From then on we abandoned the directions and let WOW control our destiny.

I liked Dubuque, it had a big bridge and a pretty river. That's pretty much all it takes for me to be fascinated. Ooh, the Mississippi. Ooh, we're up high. Ooh, that's an old factory that looks like the Sugar Beet building. Very easy to please. We could've vacationed in Dubuque and I would've been thrilled. Other interesting sites were the dairy farms of Wisconsin. They really do look like every dairy farm I've ever put together in a jigsaw puzzle. Silver and red, rounded top, like when you're taught how to draw 3D shapes in art class. My cylinders always turned into dairy barns. Maybe that should be a new criteria for our vacations. Jigsaw puzzles come to life! Again - Easy to please.

We listened to David Sedaris' When I am Engulfed in Flames on the rest of the roadtrip. Sedaris performs it himself and I thought it was the perfect road book. It's silly and episodic, and if you fall asleep, your dreams take on a bizarre combination of what your ears pick up and your subconscious interprets. I highly recommend it.

We pulled into Madison around 2pm, and checked in at the Road Star Inn. The hotel was not as nice as our Iowa City accommodations, but cheap and quiet, and close to a massive Mini-Golf course, so we decided it would be okay. They did have one really neat feature that Steven and I enjoyed immensely. Every night the desk clerks would show two in-house movies. The first night it was Ringu and The Aviator. The second night we only caught the second which turned out to be Stigmata. And then the third was The Rundown and Ringu again, I believe. We never watched any of the movies, but it was exciting to catch one at the end of the credits and then wait with baited breath as we saw the movie eject, and the new disk icon blink in the corner of the screen. It cushioned the blow of the terrible movie picks. The first night when we got back to the hotel after dinner, The Aviator had just ended, but they still had the title screen up. Steven called and requested that they start the movie again, but he had turned on the commentary by mistake. So then we watched from our room as the clerk attempted to navigate the screen to get it back to the normal feature. By the time he got it fixed, we were over the excitement and fell asleep after 5 minutes. Has anyone made it through the 3.5 hours? Is it worth it?

For our first afternoon in the city, we headed downtown to find food and the famous State Street. I had a bunch of maps and printed directions, which were rendered useless when I realized that Steven is one of those magic men that can see the name of a street and instantly know how the rest of the town is layed out. How do people do this? We basically spent all three days in the same area of Madison, and by the end of the weekend, I still couldn't figure out how to get back to the hotel.

Madison is set up very similar to Oxford, with the college/artsy area of town set up in a box around the Capitol building. Here's Steven, modeling the Capitol and my terrible photo framing abilities.

We were plagued by our lack of cash yet again, as we searched for parking downtown. There were plenty of spaces available in the parking garages, and they were actually very affordable - they just required you to feed the meters. Though we had plenty of dollar bills at that point, we were completely out of change of any kind. Steven finally wrestled into a spot behind a utilities van so we walked through the maze of apartments before getting to the business side of things. There is lots of student housing around the capitol building, because the campus is on the other side of State St. They were all old houses with rows of mailboxes on wooden porches, bicycles locked to every post in sight. It's what I always imagined a college town should look like. I have very idealistic and romanticized visions of Madison. There are bike lanes! People in hats! That girl is wearing a headband! Etc, etc.

After parking and finding the big building in the center, we set out to find food. Our only goal of the trip was to eat food that we couldn't get in Manhattan. So I made a list of different types of food and restaurants in Madison that were suggested and reviewed by TripAdvisor. (Thanks Pam Beesley. I use TripAdvisor all the time, thanks to your review of Schrute Farms B&B). Of course, along with my completely rockin' directions, nearly half of the restaurants that I found were closed. We settled for Italian, which had been bumped from the list in favor of Indonesian food, but we were hungry and had lost all faith in my preparations at that point.

We were the only ones in the place and the waiters were less than thrilled when we walked in for lunch at 4pm on a Thursday. When Steven asked for a lunch menu, the waiter haughtily informed us that lunch was OVER and we would need to order from the dinner menu. Luckily we were on vacation, and I convinced Steven that on vacation we can have two dinners. Or two lunches. Or two of whatever we wanted. Then they brought us bread and all was forgotten.

Here's Steven showing off his fancy penne pasta with pesto and garlic bread. I got something that sounded familiar but ended up looking like three enchiladas stuffed with spinach and cheese. It was delicious, but after seeing Steven's grown-up meal, I felt like I had just accidentally ordered off the children's menu.



Steven tried to order a Cafe Americano for dessert, but our waiter had never heard of it. Instead, he brought him a cup of espresso and a little pitcher of water so he could make it himself. Fine dining at its finest.

We went back to exploring our area of Madison after that, since our coveted spot behind the electric van expired after two hours. There was a mall close to the hotel that I thought included an Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, but of course, wrong again. Steven got fancy clothes at Banana Republic and I remembered why I don't like malls. We left, discouraged and cranky and went back to the hotel to catch up on the first day of March Madness.

Here's where first dinner came in handy. By the time we got back from the mall it was close to 9pm, and we were not in the mood for covert parking operations for the second time that day. Steven found out that CampusFoods in Madison includes restaurants other than Gumby's and Domino's, so I got out my trusty list and tried to order from several of them, only to miss the delivery deadline by 30 seconds. We finally settled on Indian food, because I was too tired to fight it. As a compromise, I found Sister Act playing on Lifetime and forced Steven to watch it with me. Force isn't really the right word. He whimpered every time I tried to turn it back to the basketball game. This is the man I love. An hour later, as Whoopi and the girls were entertaining the Pope, we both realized that our food still wasn't delivered. Checked with the front desk - no luck. Called Campus Foods - no answer. Called the Indian restaurant and they were closing up for the night. They had no record of our order. Great. Of course I paid for dinner. With my debit card. Why do I not see the signs and act accordingly? My knowledge is 100% hindsight. After 30 minutes, Steven finally got a real person to answer the Campus Food number and we got the order canceled and the money refunded. However, it was 10:30 and we were beyond ready for second dinner. So, on our very first night in the big wide world of Madison, we ended up at....



Not even 24 hours, and our one goal had failed. Steven is supposed to be making a sad face, but he's still giddy from the pesto at first dinner. And he really likes Sister Act.


At least I can pull off a realistic exhausted face.


At least this way, I got to watch basketball and Steven got to eat a steak. And about a third of the way into our dinner, we both realized that second dinner was a bad idea. Again, you'd think that the whole drama with the Indian food place would've made us realize this earlier. I'm the one who is supposed to notice what the universe is trying to tell me. But no. We didn't realize our mistake until we took the first bite. Magic. As we were leaving, we heard a group of boys boasting that they had been there for 13 hours. March Madness is such a happy time of year.

We ended Day 2 with In-house movie excitement, a trip to the ice machine and sweet, bloated sleep. Gluttonous vacation - is there anything better? I'd like to say that I learned from the mistakes of day one, followed the signs, continued to carry cash and quarters, never got lost, and only ate when I was hungry. But of course, that is someone else's story.