Over the weekend we went over on Saturday night to Colombus and spent the night before meeting up with the lovely #1 daughter and her family. We spent the night in the Westin Great Southern Hotel on the near south side of the downtown. It is a large lovely old six story building built around 1893 with what was originally a central light well covered by a large stained glass roof. It has been restored lovingly, unfortunately without the stained glass, but the rest of the marble clad lobby is intact with elaborate ornate columns, marble floor and various overlooking balconies and mezzanines.
The rooms are completely redone inside and are simply modern though nicely done with granite counters and tile tub enclosures. The cost was not much more than a Holiday Inn Express.
We checked in and then went down to the bar and had some Jack Daniels before turning in.
Only in America would you have people driving a 3/4 ton work truck in and carrying our clothing in soft duffels and plastic bags, dressed in T shirts and shorts, using Valet parking.
We found out the next morning that President Obama stayed there when he was in Colombus last time.
Then we drove a few blocks south to the very well preserved and large German Village. A community built up apparently all at once in the period just before or just after the Civil war. All the structures are mainly very similarly constructed with all the same color Ohio brick, brick streets etc. The houses have tiny front yards and back yards and about five or six feet between with mostly brick sidewalks running between them. There are also period commercial structures with restaurants etc. housed. Lots of professional offices too.
We had breakfast in a Jewish Deli then wandered a few blocks south to visit "The Book Loft" a marvelous bookstore which must have 20,000 SF of warrenlike rooms with thousands of volumns of books. I went right to the room devoted to cars and bought a half dozen books including a massive work on the sr70 Blackbird aircraft.
We then wandered up to Ohio State to have a look at the ARchitecture school building which we had been advised by the clerk at the Great Southern who is an Artist with ambitions to be an Architect, was worth a look. When we got there we found a modern building clad with travertine marble slabs applied like shingles. They are about a foot square exposed and mounted on metal apparati which keep them from blowing off. The sides undulate in and out and there is a partial atrium which has massive examples of classic Roman and Greek columns standing as sculptural elements so they can be studied by students.
Next door is the infamous Horseshoe stadium.....so called by a died in the wool Purdue fan.
Afterwords we found a nice place to eat in the Near North neighborhood (or a similar name) in a nice open air dining place which had wonderful food artistically presented, which appeared to be staffed and heavily supported by the Gay community. Great food, great service.
After that we hooked up with the kids and grandkids and ended up at the pool eating, drinking and watching my 6 year old granddaughter go off the high board.
Today we had a homemade breakfast that could not be beat then went over to a large art show and wandered around and I had an enormous impressive looking hot dog which turned out to be nearly inedible and lacking any semblence of taste. My four year old grandson wisely refused to eat any more of his after one bite, concentrating on the very decent bun. To tell you how bad it was after gagging mine down I did not eat his even considering the considerable investment in it.
Then headed home with a few detours to antique stores.