Indy trip: the big town edition

Saturday after the parade and goodbyes to my parents and dog, we hit the road for Indianapolis.

We were on a Trader Joe's Mission.

You see, in Tennessee we can't buy alcohol in grocery stores. This is a bone of contention among most TN residents who just want to do all their shopping in one stop and avoid a liquor store for wine...but after several attempts to change state law it STILL hasn't happened.

Well, Trader Joe's has this two-buck chuck, you see.

And ours in Nashville doesn't have it because of the above explanation.

So anyone who goes to a neighboring state with a TJ's is in charge of bringing back the contraband.

We had thankfully checked with a friend (actually, a former teacher of mine, lol) to see if alcohol was available for purchase on Sundays in Indiana. It wasn't, so we ended up making our first stop in Indy at Trader Joe's. There we purchased five (5!!!) crates of wine for people here. Up until tonight, actually, I've had 4 of them in my dining room. Thankfully, I've now sent all but one crate home to their rightful owners so I look like much less of an alcoholic now!

Um, yeah. So here we are loading the carts of wine into the car.


With the two buck chuck run out of the way, we went downtown with our friends Brian and Angie. His aunt and uncle (who we were staying with) recommended a couple of restaurants to him and we stumbled upon one of them. BARcelona is a tapas place and it was AMAZING. If you like to eat and share food with the table tapas is the way to go!





After dinner we realized that a.) it was way too late to go to the mall as it was closed and b.) we had an early morning the next day. So we headed to our lodging, but saw the Christmas tree (made of lights) and a few cool buildings along the way.




Angie and I have been friends since middle school; Brian and Anthony have only met this summer. This was a good way to bond the two of them though, since I'm in their wedding this May and Anthony will be doing the bachelor party thing with Brian and the groomsmen/friends. Soooo, we only bugged them a little while, then Angie and I retreated to our room to indulge in a time honored tradition. Milk and oreos...or in this case, Joe-Joe's!




Sunday DID dawn early, and we also found out that Brian's aunt and uncle were season ticket holders...and offered graciously to drive us not only to their church but also to the game. So we all squeezed in one car and headed off.


They worship in a humongous United Methodist church. It was a beautiful service, filled with choral numbers, handbells, and normal high church liturgy. I loved this change in venue from our norm! There was even a flute choir providing music for our walk in the hallway between services!


Angie and I changed clothes in the backseat on the way to Circle Center Mall, where we were going to have lunch. Nice little feature: on game days if you have $20 worth in receipts for the mall you can park for the game for like $3. Believe me between our lunches (and my after game dash into H&M while everyone else used the bathroom) we had plenty of receipts!

The driving around was much more fun when the driver actually knew what he was doing and I could take pictures :) Creative upshots here because I was in the VERY back of the vehicle and was trying to avoid defrost lines!




We had lunch then hiked to Lucas Oil Stadium. Even the walk was kinda fun.


WOW. This place is amazing!







If you follow football at all, you probably know how the game went. I did have very divided loyalties, so I would have been happy either way...which was handy :0)

We were among almost 100% Colts fans (there were 4 or 5 Titans jerseys around our section), and the Colts fans around us were very gracious to Anthony...and myself when I started Titans flashing!

All in all, our seats had a tremendous view

There was a marching band at halftime (such an Indiana thing!)

It was fun to see my favorite 2 teams meet up

I got an awesome picture of Peyton from the flat screen

There were fans more conflicted than I
(random jersey of the day brought to you by the Pittsburgh Steelers...with "Peyton 18" on the back...)

The temperature was 70 degrees because the roof was closed!

And we left the game smiling.

Anthony enjoyed seeing the game in the first non-Titans NFL stadium he's visited! I was happy to have given him that experience first :0)