Well, Sylvia's birthday was coming up and she happened to mention that she would love to see Chris Stapleton in concert. Chris Stapleton sang one of her favorite country songs, TENNESSEE WHISKEY, and she played it all the time. Once again the wheels started turning and out came, "We're going to Cleveland." Of course, the first question Sylvia asked was, "What the hell is in Cleveland?" I told her the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and The Christmas Story House conveniently leaving out any information about the Country Superfest Concert at Ohio Buckeye Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. (hehe... sneaky)




Our first stop after landing in Cleveland was in "little Italy". Who knew Cleveland had a small area of Italian restaurants and bakeries! We stopped at Maxi's Italian Restaurant and feasted on chicken fettuccine Alfredo and chicken Marsala. Of course the lemon Martini and so CLE drink Sylvia had to wash it down were delicious also! (I don't know how she manages to do it but her cocktail is always more tasty than mine!)

Then we moved on to the Westin downtown Cleveland hotel which proved to be very central to all of the sights we planned to see. We arrived in the evening. The pictures shown outline the beautiful lighting at night and some of the lobby artifacts.

We were both tired from the long day and actually went to bed fairly early (it was 2 a.m. but that's fairly early for Sylvia). The next day we got up after too little sleep since we had tickets to go to the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME at 11:30 a.m. Literally, it was just up the street about a half a mile.

As it turned out, Sylvia noticed a news report that Tina Turner had just died at age 83. Despite her age, it was a shock. As expected, with music playing in the background during our visit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, many of Tina Turner's songs were being played. Exhibits (above) also included a Jimi Hendrix display and outfits & equipment used by Alice Cooper! Yes, those are his boots!

There were about 7 floors of exhibits of the many inductees at the Museum, way too many to see in a few hours. Below, I am standing at a glass window with Lake Erie seen behind me. As you might expect, THE BEATLES and ELVIS both had many separate exhibits. The motorcyle pictured is Elvis' motorcycle.

Below, from left to right, show exhibits of Dolly Parton, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino, the Eurythmics, and George Harrison. We took many other pictures of exhibits but only a few are shown here.

On the way home from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we hadn't eaten anything yet and ran across Mabel's BBQ. Great drinks and food, but being from Texas has us spoiled. I'm not sure any place can beat Rudy's BBQ back home!

The next day, we had planned to see a few things! The first thing on the list was THE WESTSIDE MARKET. Having been to Boston many times, one of my favorite places is Faneuil Hall with it's large variety of food from the area. The Westside Market place seemed (on paper) to be similar. However, once we had a chance to visit, we found that many of the stations sold unprepared food and fresh fruits and vegetables. I'm sure if we lived in the area, this would be a great place to shop periodically, however, just wanting to sample some of the local cuisine, we had only a limited number of items to choose from. After some sausage sandwiches and Italian pastries, we had our fill and headed to the next stop on our visit -- THE CHRISTMAS STORY HOUSE!

A CHRISTMAS STORY was a movie that came out in 1983! It was an instant classic. When I saw it, I fell in love with it because the kid in that movie was ME growing up! I even forced Sylvia to watch it but I swear, she couldn't stay awake until the end. This may be a deal breaker and I may have to end this relationship all over one of my favorite movies. But when I heard that the original home was in Cleveland, I was already making plans to search it out! It was actually a lot of fun and we bought a number of souvenirs in the gift shop across the street from the house.


We were able to take a guided tour of the house and handle anything in the house. The tour guide was funny and informative. The last picture (above) shows me taking the "lamp leg" out of the box that it came in. The house had many props that we could play around with and was a lot of fun!

That evening, we went to see the Cleveland Guardians (formally, the Cleveland Indians) play a game! They played St. Louis that night and won in dramatic fashion with a strike out of a player in the 9th inning winning 4 to 3 with two men on base for the other team! Notice that I walked in with a NY hat (first picture) but left with a Cleveland Guardians hat (last picture).

Then there was the concert. Sylvia was starting to get suspicious way before I told her about the concert and in fact, I told her before we left for the trip! It happened to be her birthday weekend, she was turning 74, and I wanted to take her somewhere special for her birthday. When she said that she wanted to see Chris Stapleton in concert, I started looking up his tour dates. As it turned out, there was this event called a COUNTRY SUPERFEST in Columbus, Ohio on her actual birthday. Columbus was a 2 hour drive from Cleveland, so I figured that we could combine the two. The middle picture (below) is the stadium at Ohio State University where the event was held.


Multiple stars played that evening, including a newcomer named Warren Zeiders, Little BigTown, Chris Stapleton and George Strait. It really was a full night of country music (an overload of country music if your from the north!)

Sylvia and I had seen George Strait before on a previous trip, but we had not seen any of the other artists on the billing. She was excited to see Little Big Town and especially wanted to see Chris Stapleton in concert. They both put on great sets with Chris Stapleton closing with his big hit, TENNESSEE WHISKEY!

And what can you say about a living legend. George Strait was great (again). Unfortunately, it was after 10:30 pm and we had a two hour drive to our hotel in Cleveland as well as an 8:30 am flight home in the morning, so we had to miss the last half of George Strait's set.

But it was another memorable trip for us leaving us with another handful of fun memories! Of course, Sylvia turned another year older and is 74. I kid her a lot about that, but she keeps reminding me that I've got another birthday coming up later this year also and I'm not that far behind.

Below is a minute long video that Sylvia took of the fireworks display that we had at the end of the Cleveland Guardians game:

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