Pursuing Our Favorite Pastimes In Cleveland

The purpose of our visit to Cleveland was to attend the Real Wealth Network Income Property Showcase event. You can read all about that event over here.

We added a 2nd day to the trip so we’d have more time to sample what Cleveland has to offer!

Are We Back In Paris?

Fun fact about the hotel hosting the Real Wealth Network event: it was also host to the National Yo-Yo Championships!

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to watch any of the competition, though Scott did catch some of the players warming up in the hallways.

Serendipitously, the Real Wealth Network event kicked off with networking at Cleveland’s hallmark tourist destination, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, which looks remarkably like the Louvre on the outside.

The pre-conference event included full admission to the museum and special exhibits. There was even an outdoor concert at the museum (featuring Interpol doing lots of screaming).

The museum is excellent with memorabilia, costumes, history lessons, lots of music snippets and videos and a floor showcasing the inductees of the Hall Of Fame. There is a studio where you can play instruments alongside famous rock and roll tracks – yet another reason I need to pick up the guitar!

One of the special exhibits was Pinball and Rock and Roll, so Scott got to play a couple of pinball games. There is also a 30-minute video compilation of American Bandstand, which was my favorite part of the experience.

We walked through the downtown after visiting the Hall of Fame, and we found a lovely street crammed with outdoor restaurants – another callback to Paris.

Comfort Food – Our Favorite Pastime

Of course, our first Cleveland meal was comfort food at Mabel’s BBQ. The banana pudding is no match to Magnolia Bakery in New York City (which is worth a trip to New York just for that, seriously). However, the brisket was incredible. Scott’s pulled pork sandwich was also excellent with a large piece of chicharron (a.k.a., pork rind for the non-Filipino) topping it off.

We continued the weekend with even more comfort food. Lunch was at the conference where we split up into geographic markets. Scott attended with the Jacksonville rep and had a healthy bowl. But I went to lunch with the Atlanta rep and had fried chicken and waffles!

The next dinner was at The Chocolate Bar, very similar to Max Brenner in New York City. We had peanut butter hot chocolate and peanut butter mud pie (pasta and flatbread too, but that’s not important!).

My favorite part of dinner was catching the slogans on the back of the wait staff T-shirts:

• Chocolate…breakfast of champions
• Chocolate…cheaper than therapy
• Will work for chocolate

And too close to home for Scott’s taste:

• Will sell husband for chocolate

We even discovered another Grumpy’s in Cleveland – though unrelated to Grumpy’s in Jacksonville. We spent our Sunday breakfast there, and Scott loved his sweet potato pancakes. I played it safer with blueberry.

When we travel, we try to do just two meals out per day, since they tend to be bigger meals. So we skipped lunch and had an early dinner at Merwin’s Wharf, a bar with a large outdoor dining patio along the Cuyahoga River. We saw kayakers, paddleboats and small speedboats while eating an excellent Cuban sandwich (Cleveland knows how to cook pork!) and potato and cheese pierogis.

Speaking of pierogis, Scott had discovered a Polish restaurant (I LOVE Polish) while researching Sunday dinner, but it is closed on Sundays. So our final meal was a Monday early lunch at Sokolowski’s, established in 1923 and billed as Cleveland’s oldest family restaurant.

WOW! This place did not disappoint. Scott had Salisbury steak, mac and cheese and green beans. I had stuffed cabbage, potato and cheese pierogis and cabbage and noodles (the mashed potatoes looked amazing but I only had a choice of two sides!). We also got pistachio cheesecake and Oreo cheesecake for dessert. We’re definitely going back.

Nature Walks – Our Second Favorite Pastime

In addition to walking around downtown our first night there, we snuck in two short walks at local Cleveland parks. We spent a Sunday morning stroll at Rockefeller Park and its various gardens.

This is a totally free attraction with numerous gardens:

A greenhouse featuring one of our favorite plants, the hearty cactus:

Japanese garden:

Talking garden for the blind which included an audio guide and plant descriptions in Braille:

Vietnamese garden:

We didn’t see or take pictures of everything, but there were numerous other gardens – Russian, Azerbaijan, Albanian, featuring a statue of Mother Teresa, and Armenian, which featured a sculpture of the Armenian alphabet.

We spent Sunday evening at Lakewood Park, which has a pedestrian walkway right by Lake Erie and an unobstructed view of downtown Cleveland.

This park is perfectly set up for sunset watching with its double bench swings, extensive picnic area, and summer solstice steps.

Each step has a marker that points to the solstice. Every other day of the year, it’s excellent seating.

We didn’t stay for the entertainment, but on Sundays at 7p during the summer there is a concert series right in the park, this week featuring the Lakewood Hometown Band. They were warming up as we were finishing our walk.

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Real estate, comfort food and nature walks make for a successful road trip to Cleveland. Since our youngest will be in Ohio for college for the next four years, we’ll have ample time to come back!