The weekend of the 8th and 9th was a Cleveland-intensive one. We woke up late Saturday (after the late night of Prom), and it was “my day.” It was also raining lightly with 25 mph winds, so the walk-in-the-park kind of day was not really an appealing one. So, I decided it would be fun to go to Cleveland to go to the Galleria, which is a mall, but a cool one in a skyscraper. I have not been to it since Ohio Round 1, over 10 years ago, so I figured it was time.

Mer was very confused as to why we were headed to Cleveland, especially when we got to downtown proper and I made a few wrong turns. Ha! That sure confused her. It turns out I was confusing the much smaller Tower City mall with the Galleria, so we ended up in the wrong part of town, and actually never made it to the Galleria. We’ll have to save it for another time. Once we parked the car, we took the short but very windy walk to the Chocolate Bar restaurant, for obvious reasons. As an added bonus, the Chocolate Bar is in a very cool building with a huge inside square that reminded me of some of the fancier train stations in Europe. Spiffy. Anyway, we had a large meal of mac-n-cheese, followed by brownie sundaes, and I threw in a hot chocolate for good measure. It was fairly expensive, but I figured we did not get to Cleveland but once a decade anyway, so that was okay.

After lunch, we braved the gale to walk down to Tower City and wandered the two floors of the mall, which were mostly food places. It was fairly tame, but we did get to see a wedding party having their pictures taken next to an impressive fountain. Since Mer and I both love weddings, that was a happy thing to chance upon.

Outside of the mall, I kept looking at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument that stands in Public Square. It is very large and impressive looking, and then I saw doors in the base. You could walk inside the monument! Obviously, we had to go. It turned out to be a Civil War monument that honors all the branches of the armed forces, and lists all the names of all the people from the greater Cleveland area who served in the war. There was a very nice man who was very well informed inside the monument, and he walked us through all the sculptures. He even had Meredith close one of the 1600-pound doors to the monument to show how well balanced it was. It was a great little find.

After touring the monument, we went back to the car and headed back home. We were not home too long before we headed over to our friend Clarice’s apartment. Clarice was away at Miami of Ohio to see her significant other graduate, and we were lending a hand by taking care of Clarice’s four kitties. We decided they could use some human company, so we decided to watch one of Clarice’s numerous movies. She has great taste in movies, and I finally settled on Gattaca, which neither of us had ever seen. It turned out to be an excellent movie, science fiction at its thought-provoking best. A nice, mellow, and furry way to spend the evening.

But wait! Cleveland was not done with us. One of Meredith’s students is an accomplished musician, especially on the concert harp. She is part of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, and they were playing at Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra). The student’s family was kind enough to give us tickets to go see the concert, so on Sunday, we went up to Cleveland again for an early afternoon concert.

I had never been to Severance Hall before. It is a magnificent structure, and as an added bonus, we joined the family in a box seat in the second tier of the hall, so it was easy to see and hear. The youth orchestra is huge – it filled the whole stage, and even then, not everyone played in every piece. The orchestra played four pieces, including a world premier of a work by a 19-year-old college student that was very good. They started the concert with a selection from Romeo and Juliet (I forget if it was written as an opera or a symphonic work), moved on to a flute concerto in three parts, had an intermission, played the original piece, and then finished with selections from Bernstein’s West Side Story. It was very difficult to believe these musicians were all 16-18 years old. They played with presence and poise, and since I am no expert in classical music, I was not really able to tell the difference between what I heard and what I have heard other orchestras doing. The level of accomplishment was pretty amazing. The whole concert lasted about two hours, and then we headed home so Mer could tackle her ever-present end-of-year grading.