Purple Aces Roadtrip 2006

We left the house around 9AM as planned.  I had checked the weather the day before to see what might be in store for the day.  Weather.com predicted partly cloudy with temperatures in the 40-50's.  They managed to get the temperature right, but the rest of it was wrong.  The sky was overcast and it did not appear to be going to open up at all.  Regardless we headed west towards Princeton.

Princeton is about 2 hours from Chicago by car.  To get there today we were going to take I-55 south to I-80 west.  We managed to get to Princeton around 11:30am.  So not bad.  We had been there one other time, but that was for a photo trip.  So a slightly different agenda for today.  When we arrived it had managed to stop sprinkling.  We walked up and down the Main street.  Lots of cute shops.

We looked in a couple of the antique shops.  And then on the way back to the car we came across a little health food store.  It was a cute little store that felt like it should be Flagstaff Arizona and not Princeton Illinois.  So we went in.    Shortly after we went in the lady running the store offered us a cup of tea.  Since I had been planning on getting a cup of coffee down the street I decided to try the tea.  The tea was really good.  It was a mint tea called Refresh.  We looked around at all the stuff and finally decided to buy some tea.  We bought some of the Refresh tea plus some herbal tea for Carla.

Next we drove down the street to the Antique mall.  We browsed through the mall.  It was fun as at a number of the stalls there were old Christmas things out.  I almost bought an string of C7 lights.  We also found a some Breyer horses like I bought for Margo.  So maybe in the future we will look for some of the horses for Margo at the antique stores.

At this point we were getting hungry for lunch.  The original plan was to eat in Galesburg, but this was still 60 miles away.  So we decided to try and find something in Kewanee.    When we got to Kewanee of course we couldn't find anything that fit our visual image of lunch and we punted and finally opted for Burger King.  Fortunatley at Burger King they have some halfway decent food. 

From Kewanee we headed towards Galesburg.  We had never been to Galesburg before and really didn't know much about it.  To our surprise the downtown area of Galesburg looked worthy of a complete afternoon.  Since it was now raining again we followed the signs to Carl Sandberg's birthplace.  Neither of us knew much about Carl Sandberg other than he was a poet.

When we got to the visitor center, we decided to go in since it was raining.  Inside they had a nice little exhibit that told the life story of Carl Sandberg.  Actually very informative.  We also got a tour of the cottage he was born in.  For me the exhibit wa s more interesting than the tour of the cottage.

We decided to make the mental note to look up some of Carl Sandberg books to see what was available used. 

Next on the plan was to checkout part of the Spoon River tour.  In the fall each year they have a big fall color driving tour.  We keep missing it, so we thought we would at least check it out for the future.  This part of Illinois starts getting hilly again, so can imagine that it could be really pretty in the Fall.

We made our way to Canton.  Again a nice looking little town worth spending some more time at.  Canton is about 30 miles south of Peoria. 

It was getting close to game time so we headed towards Peoria.

Well we made it to Peoria by about 5pm.  Without a lot of effort we managed to find Carver Arena where the game was going to be played.  We wanted to find something to eat first and from my research the day before it looked like there should be a few restaurants near the arena. 

We parked in the parking garage across from the arena and made our way out to the sidewalk.  When we had driven around the block we had seen a couple of restaurants next door.  Both looked to be Italian like restaurants.

We decided to try Antonio's.  The menu showed pasta and pizza.  So after getting seated we were greeted by our waiter Russell.  The menu looked simple enough.  You could either custom order your pasta - pick a pasta + a sauce + ingredients or you could order a pizza.  So trying to be nice, I asked our waiter what he recommended.  To our surprise he explained he had only been working at the restaurant for 2 hours and didn't really know the menu that well.

We later learned that this was the restaurants first night to be opened and they were still working out the kinks. 

Since we had had pizza on my birthday we opted for pasta.  I ordered a simple penne pasta with marinara sauce.  Carla ordered  papparrelle with roasted peppers and spinach.  So after a bit of struggle Russell managed to write down what we had ordered. 

Our dinner was suppose to include an all you can eat salad and bread.  After about 10 or 15 minutes it started to become clear that we weren't going to get either.  The table next to us which had a different waiter had got their salad.  So when Russell appeared again I asked where the salad was.  At which point it became clear he had forgotten.  So quickly the salad appeared. 

Now at this restaurant they were trying to do the salad different by tossing it at the table with a range of gourment vinegars and oils.  Personall I wasn't too impressed with the assortment.  I guess I am somewhat a purist and not a fan of orange infused oil or fig based balsamic vinegar.  So I opted for olive oil and red wine vinegar.  Carla decided to risk it and try the currant based balsamic vinegar and olive oil. 

The salad was OK.  Nothing great, but edible.  Now it was suppose to be all you could eat.  Not sure how we could eat more than one helping since they didn't leave any of the salad dressing fixins.  So a slight flaw in their plan?

Of course the bread never came.  And it seemed a bit too much at this point to even try and ask.

And since the salad was late arriving, the entrees appeared almost immediately after our salads.  At this point Russell seemed a little stressed at trying to wait on multiple tables at the same time. 

My pasta was good.  It should have been as it was pretty simple.  Carla's should have been easy as well.  It was good, but little did she know when she ordered spinach that she should have specified how leaves of spinach as they only put one in the dish.

So overall the food was OK.  The service needed lots of work.  

While waiting for our food, we witnessed a number of different people also having dinner before the game.  At one table near us was a couple who did not seem happy.  They seemed to be going through the motions. 

At another table near two couples shared a table.  It took us a few minutes to put our finger on who these people reminded of us.  But we quickly realized that these were the "beautiful local people".  These were the people who peaked in high school or college and didn't move on.  So the woman were all gussied up with too much make-up and the guys had the paint on smiles.

It was a quick reminder of the difference between living in the bigger cosmopolitan cities and the smaller cities like Louisville or Evansville.

After dinner we headed over to the game.

The game was great fun.  Carver Arena is nice arena for basketball and the people in Peoria really come out for the basketball games.  So the place was nearly packed with people wearing Bradley red shirts.  We found our sits near the top.  Of course we were surrounded by Bradley fans.  To make matters worse, they have some silly tradition to stand until the first time-out.  So for the first few minutes we couldn't see.  To make matters worse, the guy behind us was the kind of guy who made comments out loud to nobody in particular.

So at halftime we moved to some empty seats near the other Evansville fans.  There were about 20 other fans in the upper deck behind the endline. 

Unfortunately Evansville lost, but a fun night regardless.