Fun in Cincinnati

Lawrence and I had a great 24 hour getaway in Cincinnati this past weekend. My mom and dad stayed with the kids, and Lawrence and I headed north late Saturday morning with no real plan in mind. We had a reservation to stay at the 21c Hotel (thanks to our friend, Brad Wilcox), and we planned to go to the Pottery Barn outlet and IKEA, but other than that our plans were wide open.

First stop was the PB Outlet to hopefully score a leather recliner.

No recliner to be found (at least not the one we wanted), but we enjoyed wandering around the outlet and a few other stores before heading to 21c.  The hotel was very similar to the one in Louisville...lots of modern art with a very hip and funky feel.  Our room even had one of the signature penguins you see at the one in Louisville (it sort of freaked me out when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw its shadow).

On the way up to Cincy, Lawrence remarked that he should have checked to see if any good shows were showing while we were there.  He had been wanting to see the Book of Mormon, and we couldn't believe when we spotted a billboard that advertised it was actually showing there right now (it comes to Louisville this summer).  Then, when we pulled up in front of the hotel we saw that the theatre was directly across the street.  

Even though the show was sold out he decided to walk across the street to the box office to see if any tickets were available.  He came back with two box seats with "limited viewing" for a few scenes of the show (I barely noticed!).  This was such a fun, unexpected part of our trip. When I told John we sat in a box at the theatre, he asked, "Like where President Lincoln was shot?"  That made me laugh.  No drama at our show, just laughs.

Directly across from our hotel room was the spa, so on Sunday morning we had an 80 minute couples  massage - heaven!  

Our last stop before heading home was the IKEA store. 

We had never been and wanted to see this super structure of home goods and furnishings.  WOW.  At first I couldn't get over the size and selection of everything they carried...then about 15 minutes in I was experiencing sensory overload...too many choices, too many people, too MUCH!  We finally reached an exit, and Lawrence said, "We left our massages at IKEA!"  Oh well, now we can say we've been.

What a fun 24 hours we had...we weren't gone long but it felt like we did a lot - a perfect mini-vacation in the middle of these cold, grey winter days!