Indianapolis Trip

* Note: you can skip to the end of the entry if you’d rather just look at the photos.

Thursday we arrived in Indianapolis in the afternoon, so we checked into our hotel first. We quickly realized that the city, while beautiful, was quite small, so we decided to walk over to the city’s mall, Circle Center, and walk around a bit before going to dinner. As I always do when we’re on vacation, I ended up finding some cute new clothes. New York & Company had a huge sale and more variety than the store by our house. I bought three tank tops, one of which is rather sexy that ties in the back. Joe was really excited when I modeled it for him.

After a little shopping, we walked down the block to St. Elmo steakhouse. I had read many good things about it, so I was really looking forward to our meal. Unfortunately, it was extremely disappointing. You can check out my review at Yelp. To make up for the disappointing food, we entertained ourselves by contemplating why we were seated in our dining room while some people were taken to a second one next door. We joked it was because we weren’t dressed up or attractive enough. That theory went out the window when Joe exclaimed, “Hey, she’s ugly and she just got in”. So then we thought maybe it was our clothes, but then they sat a nicely dressed couple nearby, so we were stumped. In all, we spent $116 on a meal I would never recommend to another person. I’d rather spend $20 at Target for a couple of t-bones and grill them at home.

After dinner we went back to the mall for dessert because I couldn’t stop eyeing the Godiva chocolate store. We also contemplated seeing Transformers at their cinemas. I didn’t have a sweater with me and dinner was starting to process, if you get my drift, so we nixed that idea and went back to the hotel for a bit.

We didn’t want to spend the evening indoors, so we headed over to White River State Park. We kept walking and walking until we ended up at the back end of the zoo and gardens! I took photos along the way, and on our way back we took a walk around the canal which is very picturesque. By the time we got back to the hotel it was near 10 pm but it wasn’t quite dark yet since Indiana is in the Eastern time zone. I think we got to bed around midnight and both tossed and turned most of the night. It’s always difficult sleeping in a different bed even if it is pretty comfortable.

Friday we were up at 6 am. We headed downstairs to the attached T.G.I. Friday’s for breakfast. Yes, you heard that right. Apparently they offer a breakfast buffet for $7.99, but I’d never pay that for eggs and toast; we had free breakfast passes as part of the hotel rate.

After breakfast we headed to the Indianapolis Zoo and White River Gardens. As we were getting our photo equipment out of the trunk, a couple approached us and gave us a coupon for 20% off our admission. They were zoo members so they didn’t need it. I think our total admission was only $20 with the coupon, so that was nice. And you may recall, a similar thing happened on our first visit to Milwaukee Zoo as well.

Once we got inside, we headed straight to the Oceans exhibit. We saw sea lions, penguins, and sharks. You can pet the sharks but they weren’t that thrilling, so we passed. We wandered around the area since we had tickets for the first dolphin show. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but the underwater viewing was pretty neat.

After the dolphin show we walked around the rest of the zoo and had lunch before heading over to the gardens. It was noon by that time and not only was it hot as all hell out, but the zoo was crawling with people. I had wanted to check all the exhibits a second time since the first time around some of my favorite animals (red pandas, tigers, and lemurs) were either asleep or MIA, as well as ride their itty bitty rollercoaster and train, but all the people and long lines were a total turnoff, so we went next door the gardens instead.

We must have gotten there just before the rush because we had the butterfly room primarily to ourselves for about 10 minutes before it too started to get crowded. We headed outside to grab some photos of the flowers before getting some ice cream and heading back to the hotel.

At the hotel we had to load all our pictures onto the laptop so we could reformat the memory cards for later use. That took about an hour and then we got bored so we walked over to Circle Center Mall again. This time we decided to see Transformers before dinner and I even had my sweater. Just as Joe was about to pay for our tickets he asked whether it was stadium seating and they said no, so we decided not to bother. I can’t believe there’s a theatre left in this country that doesn’t have stadium seating! We were really disappointed.

We ended up walking around a bit more and then heading to the Red Eye Cafe for an unhealthy dinner. It was completely empty inside, but the food was decent, and it was 1/6th the cost of the previous night’s dinner, so we were happy.

After that we walked back to the hotel and collapsed on the bed from exhaustion.

This morning we were up again at 6 am so we could pack up and get breakfast before heading to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the grounds tour. Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to go but I persuaded him. Good thing too since we both ended up having a really good time. I mean, how often do you get to stand in the middle of the largest racetrack in the country? The tour was an hour and a half and we spent time in the museum taking pictures of all the old race cars too. It was a nice ending to our little trip. The ride home was quicker than the ride there even with the four car accident right in the middle lane on I-80 (luckily no one was seriously hurt).

While I can’t see us visiting Indianapolis again for awhile, I’m glad I didn’t let an acquaintance’s opinion of it dissuade me from visiting. This person thought it was a dump and I didn’t see that at all. Coming from a big city like Chicago I appreciated the lack of congestion and the ability to get anywhere by foot. It seemed clean to me too, so I’m not sure what this person was talking about. In all, it was a really nice city.

Photo sets:
Indianapolis – City and White River State Park
Indianapolis Zoo and White River Gardens
Indianapolis Motor Speedway