Indianapolis, Columbus, Museums, and Great Eating

We took a little trip out of town with the family for Spring Break since we are not going anywhere this year. We skipped out on Indian Rocks Beach for our annual trip, I was not able to take a full week off with my new role and being in school at the same time, but I wanted to get out just a little bit. We originally chose Indianapolis but quickly learned that we couldn’t find a hotel Friday night because the Final Four was in town that weekend. We did get a room at the Sheraton Hotel at Keystone Crossing, which is a hotel attached to a fashion mall.

Indianapolis Children’s Museum was fun, we were able to get into the Sports Legends Experience, which was a first for us. I think my sons though have grown a little old for this museum. They didn’t find as many of the exhibits they used to love in the past as interesting. In fact, we left the museum earlier than I expected because they were bored. To compensate, we checked into the hotel and ate an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. It was still fairly early so we walked around the mall, which I found boring, and went back to the hotel room. We found a theater at the mall though, and we saw the new Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

The next morning we left early and drove from Indianapolis east to Columbus, which is the first time I’ve drive that highway. It was not as interesting as you’d expect it to be. It is as rural as you think it would be, but we did find a Cracker Barrel to have our traditional travelling breakfast. We didn’t make as great of time to Columbus as I hoped, and we had to settle for Valet parking since the parking garage was full. We quickly checked into our hotel, which was the Junto. Part of the deal for staying there included 4 complementary tickets to COSI, which was a great deal.

COSI was very crowded but as we have found with most museums, people will leave a few hours after lunch and you’ll have the place to yourself. We went to all the exhibits and finished up at the Science Behind Pixar, which was worth the additional ticket price. I learned a lot about Pixar, although I really wanted the designers of the software they use to be featured more. What you learn is that it is mostly people using software that was built for them.

Finally, we ate dinner at the Little West Tavern in the Hotel. Dinner was very good. I will note we like the Junto and we will come back again.The next day we stopped at the Outlet Mall on the way home and bought a bunch of stuff at the Eddie Bauer store. Evidently the entire Outlet Mall is going out of business, I suspect to be turned into something else.