To Indy for the weekend!

Last weekend (not the Indy-500 Memorial Day weekend, but the 15th), Rusty picked me up from work and had a very special surprise waiting for me...he had planned to whisk me away for the weekend to Indianapolis! The fabulous city is just about 2 hours away from Louisville, but hours and hours away from laundry, vacuuming and other random weekend chores. So...here I am when I realized that we were not just going home to determine what would be for dinner, but, in fact, were headed to a fancy dinner in....INDIANAPOLIS!

After 2 hours of driving and some good chatting, we arrived in the city. Rusty had booked an amazing hotel...right in the middle of downtown. He had planned a quiet weekend-not too many sites that we wore ourselves out, but just enough to keep us entertained. The hotel was just minutes walking distance from a huge mall, which was where we spent most of our time. :) Here is a bit of downtown for your viewing pleasure:

Here we are about to go into our fancy restaurant for dinner. We got checked in (which took a few extra minutes because we had to switch rooms after finding that our original room smelled of old smoke !Blah!), parked our car for the weekend and headed out on foot for our dinner reservations. What a wonderful restaurant! It was just a tiny bit more expensive than we are used to (read: much more expensive since our dining out experience is limited to McAlisters and Chili's), but Rusty had saved his tip money from this whole semester to pay for our weekend get away! Talk about a wonderful hubby!

So, after dinner and walking around a bit in the mall, we turned in for the night. We got up early the next morning in time for the amazing continental breakfast! Rusty had booked an 'executive' room, though he's not sure how he did that :) But, to our benefit, the executive rooms came with breakfast! ...And not just your average cereal-and-bagels-breakfast, but one with wonderful pancakes (mine were blueberry)! (Please don't judge us on our syrup intake.) So, here is our amazing (free!) breakfast.The hotel was the converted train station, so throughout the building there were statues depicting the location's history...though, I'm not sure what serving cocktails had to do with a train station. Perhaps the cocktails were only served in the executive waiting-for-trains-area...hum...

So, after breakfast, we checked out of the hotel, loaded our things in the car, and set out (on foot, thank you) to monument square for some site seeing. It was a huge monument with a very large fountain and shops surrounding the circle (why do they call it a square??).

Of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have some Starbucks' lattes!

Back to the mall after walking around the circle and relaxing in Starbucks. We found a new favorite store: H&M. I got a dress for $15 (I know, can you believe it?!) and Rusty got a shirt for $15 (linen and really nice...I know, the wonders never cease).

After we had had our fill of the mall, we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.

Drat! We had to leave our 'goods' outside...

After lunch, we decided to try to walk down to the river. It was just a few blocks from the mall area, where we spent most of our time. We got about half way there and it started sprinkling. We decided to go for it anyway...and about 3/4 of the way there, we were soaked and the rain just kept getting harder. So, back to the car we went. Thankfully, the wind was at our backs as we made our way to the car. Our last photo of our Indianapolis trip is below. We were a soggy mess by the time we made it back, but oh, the memories! (Please notice Rusty's hair sticking up in the back!!)