This morning Gwen (Brett’s Mom) came with us to drive around. Cleveland Heights reminds me a lot of Berkeley. In the center of town there is the University surrounded by the museum, theatre, shops, performing arts high school, etc. We drove out to Brett’s old high school, Hawkin. It was HUGE! I’m not sure how much property it covered, but once we were on campus, that’s all we could see forever! It is situated on very green, rolling hills, with each building nestled under large, beautiful trees. We drove our car to the soccer field, Lacrosse Field, Tennis Courts, Olympic indoor pool, Dining Hall, Science Building, Theatre, Faculty housing and more! His graduating class was about 100 seniors.
Next we drove to Chagrin Falls to visit his Grandmother. Again, we drove through tree covered country roads, over streams and past homes straight out of a storybook. Downtown Chagrin is as close to “Stars Hollow” (of Gilmore Girls fame) as I can imagine a town could be. As we drove in, they were even putting up small tents in the park for their candy parade. We heard about how the high school kids roll pumpkins down the hill into the center of town as a prank every Halloween. It was so much fun visiting with Brett’s “Grammy”. She is 90 years old, living on her own, and takes care of her own dog as well as caring for a friend’s dog long term. She and Brett are very close, and we heard many stories of them together when he was growing up. We had such a great visit that I hated to say good bye, but we were meeting Brett’s brother at “Melt” (featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on The Food Network) for lunch.
We had the biggest, cheesiest sandwiches EVER!! Eric (Brett’s brother) told us all about his internship he was starting in Vancouver, Canada, in a few months. Eric just graduated from college with a BFA in Industrial Design with a minor in Glass blowing. His work is awesome. After lunch, we dropped his Mom back at her house to get ready for a fund raising event that she had for work. She is a director for an Alzheimer’s/Dementia/Assisted Living home in Cleveland. Eric went back to work on a project and the four of us went into Cleveland.
We saw the Cleveland Indian’s Stadium, the Cleveland Brown’s Stadium, the world’s biggest rubber stamp outside of the newspaper office (Freedom of the Press), the painted guitars all around town, Lake Erie, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Before we left town, we just had to do some geocaching!!! Brett wanted to find a trackable so he could log it in all the way to California. We checked out the end of the pier on Lake Erie, and Brett found it under a bench. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is right on the water. It was almost closing time when we got there, so we didn’t have time to take the tour. They did have a lot of exhibits in the lobby and downstairs, so we were able to see quite a lot. Johnny Cache’s tour bus was on display outside, and Janis Joplin’s psychedelic painted car was inside as well as Billy Joel’s Harley. We will for sure have to come back to take this all in.
We headed back into Cleveland Heights for dinner at his Dad’s house. It was still a bit early so we stopped into Tommy’s for a milkshake! Yummo! After that, we went to Big Fun, a toy store that has all the games, dolls and trinkets from decades ago to fairly recent. You could get game consoles, parts and games for Atari as well as just about every board game ever made! It was a lot of fun taking the trip down Memory Lane J
Brett’s Dad lives just a few blocks away from his house. His step Mom and her mother were there as well as her daughter. Eric met us there for dinner, and Gwen came after her event. We had a ton of pizza and salad. Rick (Brett’s Dad) was excited to show Rich his classic Fiat he is working on in his garage. It was another fun evening.
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