We spent a few days out East earlier this week.
Sunday we drove to Columbus, Ohio, arriving around 3:30 pm at the most beautiful hotel we’ve ever had the pleasure of staying in – a Cambria Suites. Seriously, this place was swank without breaking the bank. After taking pics of the place and settling in, we drove over to the nearby mall to check out our dining options. We finally settled on a restaurant just outside the mall. The food was average but the dessert we shared, something they call Pazookie, was delicious. It’s described as a “freshly baked, hot out of the oven, rich and delicious cookie topped with two scoops of vanilla bean ice cream and served in its own deep dish.” Mmm, mmm, it was very good; the combination of the hot cookie with the cold ice cream was devine.
After our relatively early dinner we decided to hit the local movie theater to see MacGruber. The movie was about as dumb as we expected, but entertaining. I couldn’t stop laughing at the love-making scene; I was nearly crying! After the movie we went back to the hotel and relaxed in the hot tub for awhile before turning in for the night.
Monday we were up early to get donuts for breakfast, then made our way to Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, home of the famous Jack Hanna who is known for bringing animals on Letterman’s Late Night show. The zoo grounds are beautiful and the zoo is laid out nicely, but I found the exhibits often prevented any decent photography. Obviously the number one priority is to contain the wild animals, but I wish they’d use anti-reflective coating on the glass and wipe off the fingerprints once in awhile. I couldn’t get a decent photo of any of the manatees they have at the zoo, or the cool sea turtle that was in the tank with them. :(
The zoo has an interesting collection of animals, including a very nice Lorikeet Garden which I enjoyed, but I thought it was weird that they don’t have any zebras or giraffes. We tried our best to take our time and not rush through the zoo as we unintentionally tend to do, but even wasting time by riding their train and visiting a few sections twice didn’t stop us from being done by 12:30.
We consulted Yelp and found a cute burger joint for lunch and then drove around a bit. We ended up at a dumpy little amusement place to play some miniature golf and skee-ball before deciding to order pizza for dinner and taking it back to the hotel to munch on while watching the season finales of How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement, and The Big Bang Theory (thank goodness for the nice LCD TV in our room and the digital stations).
