Matt drove this leg of the trip from Buffalo to Cleveland. Not too bad of a drive, was really windy for awhile and ran into a little bit of snow but only for about 20 minutes or so. Pulled into Cleveland around 6:15 and went straight to the hotel. The hotel was really nice with a great location and view of Public Square. We went up to the room to chill for a few and then decided to head over to “the Q” where the Cleveland Cavaliers play to see if we could get some fairly cheap tickets for the Cavs vs. Bulls game. Cleveland has something pretty cool that I haven’t really seen before, most of the downtown city is connected through a walkway tunnel system so right from our hotel we could walk through this to the arena without even needing a coat to go outside, maybe a 10 minute walk.
So we got there and then went outside to look for some scalpers. Immediately the scalpers saw us from across the street and started yelling at us to see if we needed two tickets. We went over and the first tickets offered to us were floor seats for $400, we both kinda laughed and asked for something way cheaper. After a little bit of silence I said we were looking to spend no more than $80 for a ticket, which is still highway robbery but we wanted to see the game so whatever. All the scalpers that were around to hear me say this looked disgusted, “oh man c’mon, no way your spending less than at least a buck for this game.” So it didn’t look to good but then almost seconds later these two kids approached us and asked if we just needed two tickets and if we just really wanted to go to the game, we said yes, and he handed us two tickets and said that he only wanted the face value on the ticket which was $35 and that we would be sitting with him and his buddy. The scalpers weren’t too happy as we all walked away but screw those scumbags, I’m pretty sure they were yelling stuff at our new friend as we walked away but I couldn’t make much of it out, something about being “a goofy looking bitch” maybe? Anyways, Matt and I were stoked to land such a good deal and were really quite surprised by it all. We paid them for the tickets and headed to our seats. They were great, 1st row in the 200 level right where the corner of the arena started. The kids who saved us with the tickets sat next to us and ended up being some pretty cool dudes. Their names were Dave and Matt, both friends from the area and recent graduates of Bowling Green and Ohio St. respectively. They let us know that they were really just hoping to find two hot girls to give the tickets too, but they saw us pretty close to game time about to get ripped off so they figured we would do. Matt was looking pretty good, not sure if that helped or not. But we talked a lot about the trip, Seattle, and Cleveland. Dave again was very adamant on how awesome Seattle was so that was cool to hear.
The game was fun, got to see some good players like D. Rose, Joaquim Noah or however you spell it, Lindsey Hunter, Dan Gibson, Delonte West, Anderson Varaejao and of course the king himself, Lebron James. Varaejao had a career high points this game and Lebron had a triple double, his 18th of his career, and when he got it the entire arena went nuts. Oh and yea the Cavs won, can’t remember the exact score right now.
Our original plan for after the game was to keep it low key and just go grab some dinner but we both got nachos and halftime and really weren’t hungry anymore so we just went back to the hotel. We checked out the hotel a little more, hung out, and then threw a movie on, Burn After Reading. I fell asleep about half way through and Matt didn’t quite make it to the end either. We’ll finish it later.
We ended up sleeping in til about 11:30 but we felt it was necessary after our fun in Toronto. As you can see from below we went to the Great Lakes Brewery for some food and afternoon beers. It was a real cool place but unfortunately they weren't giving tours right now due to renovations. We had an awesome meal there though and they had great beer, we would highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in Cleveland. And then went to see the USS Cod which was an old World War 2 Submarine but again unfortunately that was closed. We took a few pictures and now we are on our way to Chicago. Later.
