We were up early, packed up and got ready to head to the next destination.
Snapped a shot of the view from our hotel room before we checked out.
I would love to be able to take our time and do this someday.
Jason found a spot for us to have some breakfast before we left Louisville called Gralehaus.
There was a bit of a wait so we popped into a CVS across the street then just kind of hung out by our car waiting for the text to tell us they had a table ready.
After about an hour of waiting, we went to check and see how many groups were still ahead of us (there was only 1) and it started to rain so they told us we could wait inside at their sister restaurant.
We had to walk through the Gralehaus then through a seating area in the courtyard out back and then their sister restaurant was on the other side.
This faux church facade was nice and I realized in hindsight that it was a pre-cursor to the decor we were about to see inside.
This is the inside of the sister restaurant - we sat at the bar and a waiter got us waters.
Sorry for the toilet in the picture but I liked the rustic look of the bathroom, the exposed brick.
This was the light fixture in the bathroom, looks like a bicycle tire.
There were some very private tables.
More brick walls.
It had a church-y theme - I like the mirror above the bar.
You can kind of see all the religious themed decor.
This collection of crosses looks great.
I really like arched windows.
I love stained glass windows too.
There was lots of angel stuff too.
There's a closer shot - they really went with the theme and it just looks so great.
All those Last Supper pictures.
More angle stuff and groupings of candles always look good (in my opinion).
We didn't have to wait long before they got us a table and seated us.
This is in the Gralehaus.
I love the wallpaper and the wood slat ceiling.
Got myself a latte.
Everyone's cell phones suddenly went off and we got this Emergency Alert.
I wasn't sure what to do but everyone in the restaurant just seemed to continue on business as usual.
Quite the storm whipped up outside though, it was pouring rain and super windy.
I was grateful that we were inside and not still waiting outside.
I ordered a burger and it would have been really good but they must have cooked some fish right before they cooked it because it had a really fishy taste and it was turning me off.
Jason had the Kentucky Croque.
It had Broadbent ham, taleggio, cheddar, mornay, sunny egg.
Then I just had to try this
Best Damn Coffee Cake
Gooey brown sugar, cinnamon, sorghum, crunchy almond streusel top
I can confirm that it was pretty damn good.
The wind and rain had subsided substantially when we walked back to the car.
There was a bunch of branches down all over the place.
We hit the road and headed to Evansville, Indiana.
We happened upon a town called Sant Claus, what?
It had a giant Christmas store so you know we had to check that out.
It was humongous.
Giant elf collection.
Cute kid in a reindeer costume on a swing.
Some outdoor decor - love this tree.
Cool nutcrackers.
I liked these character ornaments.
These dessert ornaments were super cute too.
Gingerbread village.
Lighted trees.
Santa Clauses.
Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas.
They even had Halloween villages.
The local grocery store was appropriately called Holiday Foods.
Thee was a great old red pick up truck and I had to check out the Evergreen Boutique.
It had some Christmas stuff and then regular stuff too.
I love this sign, I think I'm going to make one for myself.
There were these cute cactus's that I think would be fun to make.
There was Santa Lodge.
We also drove by an amusement park but I didn't get any pictures of that.
I think it would be a fun place to bring the family and spend a few days.
Back on the road, just outside of town I noticed a little something on the side of the road so we parked and went back to have a look.
It was a little turtle.
Jason got a really great shot of him before he took off across the road.
Turtles are actually quite fast.
We were concerned so we stayed and watched until he made it to the other side.
Unfortunately we saw many squished turtles on the road during the rest of our driving on the trip and many armadillos as well.
We made it to Evansville, checked into our room then headed out to explore a bit.
There were some gorgeous buildings in the town.
Got a close up look.
I love the patina on this statue.
Passed a pizza place, Turoni's.
Love their motto.
Liked the mural too.
Cool old building.
Jason had read about a food truck fair that was going on so that was where we were walking to.
It was supposed to be going on in this park.
It was a pretty park - unfortunately the food truck fair was cancelled due to some stormy weather that was expected.
There were tons of Canadian Geese in the park.
We had passed this small restaurant, The Hickory Pit Stop.
It's been around for a while and that's always a good sign.
Jason discovered that they had mutton on their menu which he wanted to try and there is no time like the present so in we went.
They sell championship bbq here.
ANd they had the trophies to prove it.
All the walls were lined with them.
Jason got the mutton sandwich.
Then we also got these corn nuggets that came with maple syrup.
They were good.
I like this mural.
We saw some wild strawberries - can't believe they are ready for picking and back home we barely have leaves on the trees yet.
I saw this pretty hydrangea bush beside a home so I stopped to take a picture of it and this guy across the street called out and said 'do you like my hydrangea bush'.?
I responded that I did and he came over and just started talking to us.
We must have spent nearly an hour just standing there talking to this guy about all kinds of stuff.
We asked him for food recommendations, told him we were on our way to the pizza place we'd passed earlier (Turino's) and he was like 'no, don't got there, they are way over priced for what you get, go to Talk of the Town/Lobo Lounge instead'.
So we took his advice and headed there.
Found it.
When we went in, there was a young girl working in there.
She was a little stressed out.
She said that technically they didn't have all their permits in place so they couldn't 'sell' us a pizza but she could give us a sample and we could give a donation for it.
So we ordered a pizza 'sample'.
We discovered that the Lobo Lounge was featured on the sitcom Roseanne so Jason went out to take some pictures and I sat inside and talked to the girl.
She was telling me her whole life story.
She's only 13 and said that her mom just got out of jail and they were trying to make a go of this restaurant which is a family place.
They saved up their food stamps to buy food for the place and they were just working on getting all the proper permits in place to get it up and running.
I think she said she had 4 siblings including a baby brother whom she seemed to adore.
She was so mature and she really had a lot on her shoulders, my heart just went out to her.
She was making a pizza for another customer and when she went to take it out of the oven it fell apart so she had to throw it out and make another then the same thing happened to ours and she was so flustered, ready to start crying.
She asked if she could make us stroms instead and we just said yes.
It was basically like a pizza sub and it was good.
She did make the customer another pizza and it looked so good - cracker thin crust - so we were kind of bummed that we weren't able to try it ourselves but we hope that the business is successful and maybe someday we can go back again and try it out.
Once we found out that the restaurant was the Lobo Lounge from Roseanne Jason did more research and found out that the church and the Connors house from the show were also here in Evansville.
We just happened to pass the church on our walk back to the house.
This was the library - such a gorgeous old building.
We even saw Sesame Street.
This was our room.
This was the view from the room.
It started looking kind of gloomy and like a storm was headed our way.
We were craving pizza still so ordered up a couple from a place called Kiplee's that had good reviews - they didn't deliver so we just drove down and got them and brought them back to the hotel.
This is the Fire & Honey which had Pepperoni, bacon, an assortment of sweet and hot peppers, topped with Mike's hot honey.
It was delicious.
Then we also got just a plain pepperoni.
The pizza was very good.
We started seeing some lighting so Jason went out for a walk to get some photo's by the water.
He got a few good shots.
Then we he came back to the hotel, we were about to go to the casino when this announcement came over the pa system saying that a tornado had touched down in the area so there was like a state of emergency.
They told everyone to put their drinks down and go to the bathroom and stay away from the windows.
I was nervous, not going to lie.
Jason was at the window of the room looking out and it freaked me out, I made him come away from it.
We just sat there for awhile and no more announcements were made so we turned on the tv to find some news to get some updates.
There were tornados all over the place and states of emergency in all of these counties and stuff but we didn't really know where we were.
Eventually we called down to the front desk to ask if they'd make another announcement when it was all clear and they said things were fine, state of emergency had passed and we were good to go.
Would have been nice if they'd announced that but anyway, we headed out to the casino for a while.
I found the pinata game that I liked and played that for a bit.
I didn't win anything unfortunately.
That's all for today, until next time, be happy!
No comments:
Post a Comment