Our friend Ellen came out to visit us last Wednesday and stayed through Saturday. Ellen had come out during her spring break, and I had touted it as “Lavish Ohio.” Since we had sold the house and Ellen had just wrapped up her PhD program, it seemed fitting to go all-out and bill this visit as “Lavisher Ohio.”

I took Wednesday (and the rest of the week) off since Ellen was scheduled to get here around noon. I went for a long run with Jason in the early morning, and I had a terrible run. It was hot and humid and I did not drink enough. I got home and showered and then napped, and I got up just a few minutes before Ellen arrived.

Ellen is a big fan of Chick-fil-A restaurants, so we started off Lavisher Ohio with a trip there. None of us had eaten lunch, so the timing was good, and we once again got very good service, something that Chick-fil-A does very well. We even got to chat with the manager for a bit, and that was interesting; he is a very outgoing man and a part-time pastor, and it was much fun to get to talk to him.

After we were fortified by lunch, we headed over to the Stan Hywet estate. Stan Hywet is a public mansion and grounds that was built around 1915 by the Seiberling family, who were the founders of the Goodyear tire company. The house and grounds are very beautiful, and Mer and I wanted Ellen to see it. We ourselves had not been in the actual house in years, so we were looking forward to it as well. We paid to have a guided tour of the first two levels of the house (the top two floors were servants’ quarters and that is a different tour). It was a warm day, and that made the house warm, but it was still a worthwhile tour. Ellen is quite good at decorating her house, and she was making lots of mental notes about some of the decorative touches in the house, like the sculpted plaster ceilings. I would not be surprised to see Ellen’s house have decorative plaster the next time we visit her in Michigan.

The house is very lavish, with a music room/ballroom, a dining room that can seat 40 people, great bedrooms and balconies, a game room, and indoor pool, and more. The house is decorated extensively as a Tudor-style mansion, with lots of woodwork and leaded windows. The tour lasted about 90 minutes and Ellen seemed to enjoy herself.

We then spent quite awhile wandering the grounds. Stan Hywet sits on something like 60 acres, and much of that land is well tended. There is a lagoon in an old rock quarry (where Stan Hywet gets its name – it means “rock quarry” in Old English) with a very fine stone overlook. There is a Japanese-style garden, a large fountain behind the house, a tree-lined walk, a huge arbor, and extensive gardens. It was a very pleasant place to stroll around.

We stopped by the cafe on the way out so Mer and I could get something to drink since it had been so hot (Ellen passed on the drink). We then piled in to the very warm car, cranked the air conditioning and headed north to the Gorge Metro Park.

The Gorge Metro Park in Cuyahoga Falls may be my favorite metro park in the area. It is a very interesting path that winds around and through lots of rock outcroppings, wanders along next to the Cuyahoga River, and has excellent views of a dam. I find all of these things interesting. We tromped the entire trail, which took over an hour, and Mer and Ellen both humored me by agreeing to take the more difficult path that goes through and over more rock. We were quite hot by the end of the walk, but I was grateful that it had not rained since we had heard one peal of thunder while we were out on the trail and still about 20 minutes from the car.

We finished the walk with just enough time to scoot over to Rockne’s restaurant, which is a local restaurant chain. We were meeting out pastor Ken and his wife Janet for supper. Ellen had met Ken and Janet when she was out here in the spring, and they had hit it off, so I wanted to get everyone together for supper. Ken and Janet were waiting for us when we got there (we were about five minutes late), but had not been waiting long. We ordered food, and chatted about Ken and Janet’s daughter’s recent wedding, including looking at some pictures Janet had brought along. Ellen told amusing stories about her PhD dissertation defense, which included obscure and not-exactly-on-topic questions like “What would Aristotle and Boethius say about the question ‘Is history real?'” It was a jovial evening.

Thursday we headed out fairly efficiently. We were off and headed toward Cleveland before 9:00. We took a few wrong turns along the way, but we eventually found our destination, which was the Lake View Cemetery.  I am well aware that it is weird to take an out-of-town guest to see a cemetery, but I had heard lots of good things about it, although Mer and I had never been. It actually turned out to be really interesting, and the two hours we spent there went by very quickly.

Lake View Cemetery is a very pretty spot, and there are over 100,000 people buried there. President Garfield is buried there, as are lots of wealthy people like Rockefeller. There are also lots of ordinary people buried there as well, and the cemetery is still active (and they claim they have land to continue for another one hundred years). So, in addition to being a very pretty place to walk, there are lots of interesting monuments, including a Tiffany-designed chapel with a huge stained glass window. The chapel was spectacular and worth the trip just by itself, but the Garfield monument was also interesting, huge, and had great views from the balcony. Lake View is a very good trip, and Mer and I will be going back soon.

After touring the cemetery for a couple of hours, we headed back to downtown Cleveland for lunch. I had found an interesting-looking lunch place on 4th street called Pickwick and Frolic. The restaurant had fine food, and the inside of the restaurant was decorated in a 1930s theme that was beautiful. However, the real find was 4th street itself – we sat outside on the sidewalk and enjoyed the fine day. It tuns out that 4th street has been turned into a pedestrian zone, and it is lined with restaurants. The place was humming with people and activity, and it was a great place to relax and have lunch.

After lunch, we walked the six blocks back to Playhouse Square. We went in to the 2500-seat Allen Theater, which is about to be renovated and turned into three smaller theaters, so I was glad to get to see the entire theater one more time. We were there to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. It had been a long  time since I had seen it, and Ellen had expressed a desire to see it. We had excellent seats in the fifth or sixth row since it was a Thursday matinee (Ellen joked that I might as well have tried to get seats on the stage).

There are two versions of Phantom – Webber’s well-known one, and a lesser-known one by Yeston and Kopit. I often get them mixed up. Yeston and Kopit’s version has a very tight story-line and one that explores the Phantom and his story more. So, I was very surprised when the Webber Phantom picked up right in the middle of the action, where it becomes plain that the Phantom has been teaching the chorus girl Christine to sing, and that this has been going on for some time. Once I got over the surprise and remembered that Webber’s version is about the huge spectacle more than the story, I had a good time. I did get a little irritated once in awhile that most of the play is sung, even most of the speaking parts. But, the play lived up to the promise of being a huge production, with a cast of a least forty actors, many many elaborate sets (some which were used for only one three-minute song and then changed out), and a fairly large orchestra of probably twenty musicians. It was an  entertaining time, and the singers were all jaw-droppingly good.

After Phantom, we headed down to Canton to go to a very cool restaurant and vineyard called Gervasi’s. Gervasi’s has a large and pretty grounds, and the restaurant itself is an old converted barn. Sadly, after we ordered, Ellen became mildly ill with a headache and went out to the car to lie down. Mer and I ate our food efficiently, and got Ellen home so she could get some sleep. I was sad that Ellen did not feel well, but a good night’s sleep cured the headache, so Lavisher Ohio could continue on Friday.