Sunday, March 31, 2013

Exploring Indianapolis, and recovering from Friday -- March 30th -- Day 18

We awoke Saturday morning to find clear blue skies and a brilliant sun, indicating that at last the weather was starting to warm up.  With no basketball today we set out to explore the city a bit more.   Indianapolis, known locally as the "Circle City," is actually laid out in quadrants, which converge in the traffic circle at the center of downtown a few blocks from our hotel.  At the center of the circle is a striking monument to the Indianapolis Volunteers, men who fought in (as described on the monument) the "War for the Union", pictured in the lower photo to the right.  Within a very few blocks there are other almost-as-impressive monuments to those who have served in various conflicts, including one dedicated to Hoosiers (the unofficial nickname for Indiana residents) who have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.    A few blocks to the west is the impressive Indiana state capitol, pictured at the upper right.  These handsome public structures combined with the stadiums and convention center also located in the city core make for a very vibrant downtown.  Our first stop was to tour the Oldsfields-Lilly House, the palatial home of one of the descendants of the founder of Eli Lilly Company, the drug company that is still headquartered in Indianapolis (another Lilly descendant was a classmate of Max's at Duke).  Unfortunately the door to the building bore a sign indicating that it was closed until April 1st for renovation, so that effort was foiled, although we will try again on Monday on our way out of town (the website says the house is closed on Mondays, so we're not optimistic that this effort will be any more successful).  On the other end of the cultural spectrum our next visit was to  Indianapolis Motor Speedway, site of the Indianapolis 500 and several other major automobile races.  Although neither Max nor I have any interest in car racing, it was kind of fun to take a bus ride around the track,as well as wander through the display of cars and motorcycles of various vintages, and of course the gift shop presented many options for souvenirs to bring to the grandsons.  The day had warmed up quite nicely, and by mid-afternoon we were ready to take a break from playing the tourist, and took in a movie, Admission, which was an entertaining and pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.  After having dinner at a local sports bar we returned to the hotel to watch the last few minutes of Ohio State's loss to Wichita State (way to go Shockers!) on TV and then retired to get ready for Sunday's big game between Duke and Louisville, which in the opinion of the sports columnist for the Indianapolis Star will determine the ultimate national championship.  Wish us luck here and in Texas, where shortly before the Duke game Michigan will be playing for a trip to Atlanta as well. 

No comments:

Post a Comment