Alex and I have often talked about me tagging along to one of his many conferences, well I told him that I for sure wanted to go to Cleveland with him so I am going to plan some things for me to do. First off, I absolutely love the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I went there several years ago and I can't wait to go again. Being able to go there while Alex is away conferencing is perfect because he has little interest in going and I can spend all day just wandering around by myself, getting lost in all of the neat things that are there (my personal favorite is Ian Anderson's first flute, it's a pawn shop piece of junk, which makes it all the more cool).
There's a couple of evenings devoted to things to do, one evening there are two trips to choose, an evening with the Cleveland Symphony and dinner or a Lake Erie cruise (also with dinner). We considered both of these but the symphony would cost $100 person and the cruise $75 per person. I would've been all about the cruise but then I went to their website and saw how tiny the boat was, max capacity 75 people and it looked cramped...plus dinner on board, I didn't see how that was possible, and with a cruise there is no way you can decide to leave if it sucks. So we decided to skip that and plan some fun evening things around Cleveland, which would probably be cheaper and more enjoyable anyway. I wanted to go to the House of Blues but Alex didn't seem too excited about that either. I think he was mostly unexcited about the 80s band playing that evening. I think we'll find some other fun stuff to do though, and we can probably get a decent group of people together by not doing the planned things too.
Although this summer is the conference I'm most interested in tagging along, Alex is going to Germany for a week and I cannot pass up this opportunity either. Alex will even get a day off of the conference for sightseeing, which I would like to use to take the train to Bamberg where my family lives. My mother is from Germany so her entire half of the family lives there, including my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. They're an interesting group of people (you haven't seen stubborn until you met my family), underneath their tough exterior you can really see how caring and warm they are, I always thought it was a shame I didn't know them better growing up. I'm also looking forward to wandering around Germany on my own, it'll be so different from the last time I was there with Carthage Choir, I'm more in my element when I can explore a place on my own than with 60 other people.
technorati tags: activities, fun, travel, conferences, conference, germany, cleveland
