Cleveland

Yes, like Gretchen said, I was lucky enough to get to spend two nights in beautiful downtown Cleveland, Ohio--a place that's high on everyone's list of places to visit, especially in November. Truth be told, while I didn't really see anything other than the drive from the airport and the walk from the hotel to work, downtown Cleveland is actually filled with beautiful old buildings...the only problem being that downtown feels so empty that it's not clear anyone actually occupies those buildings. It's one of those cities that's definitely seen hard times but the residents have a lot of pride in it...a scrappy city, I suppose, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I think my favorite moment may have been last night when I was walking home from dinner. The restaurant (which was excellent and tres chic, by the way...in a relatively short time I had at least three people tell me that the owner was one of the new Iron Chefs) was on a block that had looked like it was recently pedestrianized and featured a few restaurants and a few bars. Nice, but nothing to write home about and certainly not bustling. Anyway, I passed a couple of young women who were making there way toward one of the bars, and one of them turned to the other and said: "Doesn't this totally remind you of New Orleans?" Let's see...downtown Cleveland...the French Quarter...yep, totally similar.