Indianapolis - Day 2

Thursday was a true vacation day. We had nothing scheduled or planned. Just a day to do whatever we wanted. We slept in, went to lunch, did some shopping and saw a movie. We spent the evening sight seeing...although I'm not that impressed with the things/places Indy has to offer tourists. We toured the Capitol building, walked the canal walk and had dinner at a little cafe by the water. The immediate circle center downtown area was a fun and lively place.  All the hotels and restaurants are within a few blocks of each other and it makes for a busy happening place.  


I'm not at all impressed with the rest of the city.  Yes, they have a nice big race track but it's old. The city is old and pretty dumpy.  There was construction all over the city and every road we drove on seemed like it needed to be repaved.  There were also a lot of abandoned buildings.  The funny thing is that the city had a ton of statues and memorials to honor random events in history.  I felt like every block had a statue or memorial site of some kind.  If they spent less money on statues and more money on the rest of the city I think it would help.  I will get off my soap box now! I'm sure there are really nice parts of Indianapolis.


 I know you have to pay for parking in any downtown area of a major city although I was surprised that we had to pay $26 a day to park at our hotel with no in and out privileges. We thought we were pretty clever (and we turned out to be) when we decided to park in the meter parking on the street by our hotel.  It ended up only costing us a few dollars a day since we were gone during the majority of the daytime hours.  We did have one little hiccup which came in the way of a parking ticket on Friday morning.  They start charging for parking at 7:00 am and we forgot to set the alarm to get out there and put money in the meter. Ricky made it out at 7:08 am but we had already gotten a ticket.  Good news...the ticket was only $20 which was still cheaper then parking in the structure.  Once we got in the routine down and we didn't see any more tickets!

 It's tradition for us to see one, or several, churches when we vacation. They are all so unique and different and fascinating to see. This trip there were quite a few within walking distance of where we were staying so we explored all of them.

This is the inside of the church in the picture above. I really liked the dark wood on the beige walls. It was very dramatic looking and very eye catching. 

We didn't get to go inside this one. From the outside I think it's one of the prettiest churches I've ever seen. It looks like a castle from England. We walked all the way around it hoping to find an unlocked door but no such luck. Bummer. 

The State Capitol Building. 

 Inside the capitol. 

 A meeting had just adjourned when we arrived so we didn't get to see much of anything spectacular happening while we were there. 

 The little cafe we ate at was at one end of the canal walk over looking the water. 

 We walked about halfway down the trail. There were some cute apartments on one side of the water and a sidewalk on the other. Given what we had seen in the rest of the town, this was a nice little area.

 This sporty little car is what got us around for the week.