Taking advantage of an unseasonably warm late October, my parents drove down from South Bend last weekend for a visit. The weather promised to be mid-70s and rain-free, so we decided to hit downtown in the middle of the afternoon and see what there was to see.
The parents, the sister, the husband and I all met up and started off with a great late lunch at Palomino. It was a first for me, and while I'd love to make it back soon, it might have been a bit on the fancy side for the boy, who has the palate of a nine-year-old. He made do with a burger (minus veggies) and fries. I had a perfectly portioned tomato/pesto/mozzarella panini with a side salad of field greens with goat cheese and pumpkin seeds dressed with olive oil and topped with a lemon wedge. I took a wild guess that the lemon was meant to be squeezed over the salad to finish the dressing, which met with reasonable success. Mom had the same salad and was a bit mystified by it, so she took my lead, to mixed results. The goat cheese was a little out of her comfort zone as well, but, baby steps, I guess.
Next up on the rotation was a walk along the canal, which I'm ashamed to admit was also a first for me, even after four years as a Naptowner. We spent some time at the Medal of Honor recipients memorial, which in addition to being fascinating and humbling, is also just plain pretty. We continued along the canal walk onward to White River State Park, past the museums and down the sculpture path until we turned around at the zoo. All the while I was kicking myself for not having taken advantage of such a beautiful, culture-fied resource right in my own downtown. What else had I been missing out on for so long?
Well, Monument Circle, of course. I was astonished to recently learn you can actually go inside the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at the center of downtown, to something called the observation level, which blew my mind, because it looks so narrow, right? So we went inside the base of the monument, which has a gift shop (also a revelation) as well as an elevator and a mind-numbing number of stairs leading to the top of the monument.
Now, I don't see myself as clinically claustrophobic, but I can certainly see how that mindset could have some merit. A little intimidated by the 20-some stories worth of narrow stairs, we instead opted for the narrow elevator. This thing seriously was built for two people, and we crammed five grown adults into it. Any kind of weight limit or capacity guidelines were notably absent. We took this to mean "go for it."
For better or for worse, the elevator is equipped with windows on a couple sides, so during the painfully slow ascent, we got to watch the guts of the monument fall below us. My dad, not knowing what we were signing up for, casually brought up the recently resolved Chilean miner crisis, seeing no irony in the discussion of being trapped in an enclosed space while we were all in a terribly enclosed space.
So my inner claustrophobe starts in with some low-level panicking, wondering how recently the elevator had been serviced and how often it malfunctioned, and, oh Jebus, what if it stops RIGHT NOW. Fortunately we reached the top of the line in due time, where we filed out and took a couple quick flights of stairs to the apex. Along the way, we passed a woman who made me feel simultaneously better and worse, as she was huddled under the stairs, white as a ghost and sweating, repeating to no one in particular, "I'm sorry, I'm just really claustrophobic, I'm just really claustrophobic." Yikes.
It was admittedly a great view. I made sure to take in the sights from each side, noting landmarks and marveling at how quickly downtown Indy falls away and blends into wooded residential, suburban, and finally rural territory. The fall colors have been hit or miss this year, but they were as great as I've seen them from that height.
We decided we'd had enough observatin' after about 60 seconds though, and made our way back down to the elevator. I steeled myself for the descent and came to realize why I had only just heard of this attraction after several years of Indy residency.
But the whole excursion did give me the staycation bug just a little. I mean, I moved to Indy to get away from the dead-end-ness of South Bend, and I haven't really made good on the resources now available to me.
So now I'm on a mission to start exposing myself and my other half to some culture, dammit. Where should we start?
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