Don’t you just love mini-break vacations? Kate and I escaped Indianapolis this weekend to spend a couple of days exploring Bloomington. It’s only about an hour’s drive away, but the landscape and the ambiance are completely different. I’m always amazed to see rolling hills appear, seemingly from out of nowhere as we drive south. Kate lived in Bloomington for several years as a student at Indiana University, so he got to play tour guide for the weekend.

We stayed at the charming Grant Street Inn which is within walking distance of the campus and dozens of great shops and cafes.

We made it into town in time to catch the tail end of the farmer’s market. I was impressed at all the plants being sold here. I even found a stand selling locally made, soft alpaca yarn in all sorts of pretty neutral shades. After exploring, we headed for Kate’s favorite restaurant for brunch, Michael’s Uptown Cafe. Those are Indonesian corn fritters smothered in salsa (think, savory pancakes) in front of Kate, and you can also see a little bit of my yummy potato omelet.

Later, we explored the shops in town, and happily I discovered the local yarn shop where the selection was small but the staff was super friendly. They seem to have a lot to offer in the way of classes — I enjoyed listening in on a color theory class of some kind that was going on while I shopped. And, of course, I didn’t walk away empty handed! I picked up a few skeins of Noro wool (color #88) intended to become a Booga bag.

Our favorite daydream is to quit our jobs and work together running a cafe of our own one day. And lately we’ve begun to take that fantasy a little more seriously… because if we’re ever going to act on it, this would be the time to do it. So, we couldn’t help but scout potential locations while we wandered around town. Such as…

The third location above was formerly a McDonald’s, believe it or not. You know this little college town is something special when the McDonalds, Einsteins, and Ben & Jerry’s all go out of business in favor of the oodles of locally owned restaurants in the area.

Some other highlights include: Going to see the movie 13 Going on 30 (we both thought it was completely charming… and not only because the main characters are named Matt* and Jenna!). Sipping coffee drinks and smoothies at the sassy Soma coffee house. Shopping for books in the local bookstore, and petting the resident cats. Chasing squirrels around the paths of the IU campus. Feasting on fantastic sushi. And topping it all off with a wonderful breakfast spread back at the Grant Street Inn.

*Kate’s given name is Matthew.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2004 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.