Saturday/Sunday April 27th and 28th - Quick Weekend Trip to Columbus OH - About 5 miles walking around downtown Columbus

The weather forecast was positively dreadful for the weekend.  We decided in the middle of the week that we would embrace the bad weather by choosing something that didn’t rely on good weather.  So I redeemed some Hyatt points for a 1 night stay at the Hyatt Regency Columbus and we stated Friday night on the way at a casino in Salamanca NY.

The casino night was fun but ran late.  The drive went pretty well despite Ohio’s larger than average number of dorky passing lane hogs.  Even 15 years ago when I would go to Ohio with Drew (who is from Ohio) it always seemed like people were on sedatives there.  They have big freeways though with 3 lanes or more each way even in rural areas so that helped.  I was surprised to see signs for Mansfield on the way.  Mansfield is home of the catchily named ‘North Central Ohio Industrial Museum’ which came on my radar as a possible stop on a trip to or from Indiana I hope to make at some point.  So we diverted to go see it.  I was surprised that the Industrial Museum is actually a small side show in the very very large Ohio State Reformatory complex.  This former prison was made famous by being the setting for some parts of the Shawshank Redemption movie.  There were a TON of people visiting the prison museum and the admission is an astonishing 30 dollars per person for the self-guided tour.  So we had a double museum experience and enjoyed both.

On the way into Columbus we went to Noodles and Company, something that might seem mundane to a lot of people but we don’t have any near us.  Having bowls of carbs comfort food seemed like revisit to one of the few places we miss eating at from our time in Oregon.

When we arrived at the hotel downtown, the unloading circle in front of the hotel was very crowded.  I expected there to be valet parking but it looked like people were just unloading and hopefully later self-parking.  I parked behind a pickup truck in a way that left the most room for large vehicles to navigate through the congested circle and headed into the lobby to check-in.  Apparently, as soon as I left the car there were valet parking people and they didn’t like where or how I parked temporarily while checking in.  Brian came in, very flustered from having the valet snap at him, wanting the car keys.  It wasn’t a great start to our little get-away.  Thankfully we had a beautiful room on the top floor of the hotel.

After a brief stop in our room we decided to walk up High Street to see the Short North neighborhood which the Noodles and Company manager had recommended as a good walking destination near downtown.  As promised, High Street was interesting and full of little shops to look at. Brian was hoping for some ice cream and I spotted a market just off High Street that looked like the sort of place that would have interesting food choices.  A quick glance at Yelp confirmed that North Market was the kind of urban market/food hall that is becoming a common urban commodity lately.  North Market is allegedly 148 years old but honestly it felt just like 5th Street Public Market (in Oregon), York Central Market (in York PA) or Broad Street Market (in Harrisburg PA).  It’s funny how many anti-big business shop local groups  have come up with a cookie cutter design for a ‘local market’ that is at least as homogeneous as the average suburban mall.  

There were quite a lot of people there even as late in the afternoon as we were there.  Thankfully there was an ice cream shop, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream. The ice creams really were top notch and refreshingly, the serving sizes were small enough that I could have 2 different flavors without having 1000 calories worth of ice cream.  I had a deep intense chocolate scoop and a scoop of butter cake flavor.  The chocolate was astounding but both were pretty good.  We proceeded North on High Street and just appreciated the relatively rare for us experience of being on bustling urban streets.  The Short North part of High Street certainly presents as a prosperous and successful entertainment district.  Overall, Columbus has enviable demographics and population growth.  It’s one of the very few Midwest cities where the official population has gone up on EVERY 10 year census all the way back to 1820.

Around 6:30 pm it started to rain on us and it went from nothing to a torrent in just 1 minute.  This suddenly marked the farthest North we were going to get on High Street.  We tried to hurry back to our hotel but we were completely and utterly soaked.  Literally my t-shirt wouldn’t have been any less wet if I’d fallen in the river.  Even our shoes were so soaked that we had to wear our hiking boots the next day.

The picture doesn’t do it justice.

Sunday we walked around the capital building and district and along the Scioto River.  Unlike High Street on a Saturday evening, the capital and river district on a Sunday morning isn’t exactly a hot spot but the contrast was nice.  

We then headed back to the hotel and proceeded to wait 20 minutes or so to get the car back from valet.  Then we headed home, mostly sticking to the Interstates for as rapid a trip as possible.  Skyline Chili was a much enjoyed stop on the way through Canton.

Overall, considering the short amount of time we had, we did a good job getting a taste of Columbus.  I’d say Columbus is one of the least talked about large cities in the US and it’s really quite large at nearly 1 million in just the city.  On the other hand, I can see why it’s not the most talked about place. Most of the city, even parts of downtown, are pretty suburban and car centric feeling.  High street was reasonably walkable and there were buses here and there but Columbus has no subway, metro, light rail, streetcar or even Amtrak service.  The NW suburban area we went through was particularly tedious with mile after mile of busy stroad and lots of traffic.  There isn’t a ton of obvious history and overall it feels more like a gigantic suburb than a particularly impressive city.

The drive home was routine and pleasant.