Columbus

If you are following me on Twitter, you already know that Tim and I hit the road Saturday morning for Columbus, Ohio to see the musical Spring Awakening at Palace Theatre. Tim already gave an account of the weekend and, since I’m feeling lazy, I won’t recount every detail. I enjoyed the show and the food and I caught a few pictures. I recommend reading Tim’s post before reading this to get the what-where-when because I’ll be using photos to fill in the details.

When it was clear that our bladders could not withstand another mile, we made a quick stop in some nameless town in Ohio. Our choices: Arby’s or Micky D’s. McDonalds had a play place, so that was clearly the place to stop. It turns out that Tim’s reasoning was irrefutable: play places=cleanly bathrooms. The women’s restroom even sported a very rare plant. What fortune!

We press on until lunch time. We see a sign on the interstate for a Max & Erma’s. Tim assures me that the food there is decent so we got off at the indicated exit and follow the sign’s directions. We drive. And drive. We leave civilization. It seems we are the only ones on the long, straight road.

Clearly, we missed the restaurant, so we pull off to turn around. Tim already has his trusty iPhone at the ready to search for the Max & Erma’s and get directions to it from Nowherewhenville. The iPhone’s built-in GPS cannot pinpoint our location. Fail! Resigned to the fact that the interstate exit dumped us into a space-time vortex, we backtrack, hoping to find the restaurant or indeed, the interstate. We eventually found the M&E’s attached to a hotel. Now, too hungry to care if we ever return to our proper dimension, we enter and order. Even being as flummoxed as we were as to why there were televisions in the bathrooms, our appetites were hearty. We partook of our victuals and got back onto the interstate, in what we can only assume was our proper place in the space-time continuum.

We only had about another hour until we reached our hotel. Upon arriving, I was tickled to see this sign. Surely, such a proclamation would ensure that our brief stay would be quiet and peaceful. Clearly, the fools forgot to hang the sign reading, “And furthermore, NO UNATTENDED CHILDREN.”

Our room was on the ground floor, right by the pool. Had this been a prolonged stay, we would have had to endure the endless rapid, tromping of young feet eager for liquid immersion. The tap water in the bathroom smelled of chlorine due to the sheer proximity of the room to the pool. There was a lot of yelling and the floor in front of our room was wet at day’s end. But the place was clean and we only had to stick it out for one night so we worry no more of LOUD PARTIES and drive off to the Lemongrass for dinner.

We both really enjoyed our dinning experience at Lemongrass and I hope to find an excuse to go to Columbus again to sample more of the menu.

Spring Awakening was very good and this particular touring production was good. I’m always disappointed with the sets of touring musicals but perhaps that is just the nature of the beast. The last two touring musicals I’ve seen had three high, flat walls plastered with random bits of kitsch and this design just doesn’t excite me. The lighting was done fairly well. There was only one time that I thought it was distracting. If lighting is going to be noticeable, it should be done to make an awesome impact. There was at least one gobo sequence that didn’t do anything for me. This production did have a raising platform in an attempt to add levels. The cast was excellent. I really enjoyed Melchior (who was performed by understudy Perry Sherman) and Moritz. I thought the female characters were well performed well (beautiful voices!) for what the actors were given. I attribute the want of interest in some of the female characters to be the fault of the writing/adaptation. Ilse could have been developed more.

A very enjoyable evening at the theatre nonetheless, we head back to the room and fall almost instantly to sleep- or as close to as possible. I know better than to not take my pillow. Sigh.

We have a highly lack-luster breakfast featuring a bagel, an apple and, yep, you guessed it more hordes of unattended children. We get the hell outta there. And then someone mentions the word doughnut. I suspect it was Tim. Thus is inspired the Columbus Doughnut Hunt of ’09. We couldn’t have been happier to FINALLY stumble upon the Jolly Pirate Donuts to be served up sugar and doughy goodness by two rightly jolly lassies in pink behind the counter. Craving appeased, we head to a place that advertised artisan chocolates in our Playbills.

I’ll skip the part where I post pics of the gorgeously presented chocolates at Yosick’s. The tasties didn’t stick around that long. This was easily the best chocolate I’d ever tasted. Ever.

All in all, Tim and I had a pretty darn good time in Columbus. No really, that’s Tim’s ‘darn good time’ face (and the only picture in existence that proves he went at all!)

PHOTOS: Plant and two sign photos taken with Jen’s mobile. Portraits taken with Tim’s iPhone. Bathroom shot by my Canon Powershot. All photos by me except the final photo of me wearing solid red.