Cleveland rocks?

Fae and I decided it would be a nice idea to go to Cleveland, to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the zoo. Cleveland's less than two hours away from where Fae lives, but I thought it would be nice for us to get a hotel and stay overnight. Especially since it was going to be free (or nearly) with my AirMiles. So we booked the hotel (which of course wasn't actually free... that's the way these things work, right?) and headed down yesterday.

We should've known things were going to go wrong, because my GPS suddenly stopped working on the way out of Pittsburgh and we ended up driving in circles in downtown Pittsburgh trying to get the stupid thing to "recalculate route."

When we left Pittsburgh it was yet another gorgeous sunny, warm day. About 26 degrees (Celsius). So of course Fae and I only packed sundresses. We actually both almost packed jeans but changed our mind last minute and didn't. By the time we go to Cleveland, it was raining and 11 degrees. What the hell? We were very poorly dressed, obviously. We parked and ran into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, stepping in puddles with flip flops and covering our heads with our very small sweaters.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was pretty awesome - I hadn't been there since I was about 8, and I definitely appreciated it a lot more this time. We stayed a few hours, then we decided to check into the hotel and just hang out a bit in the warmth before we went for dinner. This is when I discovered that while I had brought my laptop, as planned, I had forgotten the power cord. It was charged about 70%, but that's only about 3 hours of usage. We had brought movies to watch in the hotel! Damn.

We watched How I Met Your Mother for a bit, and then headed out for dinner. We were staying pretty far from the city, out by the airport. But we had a GPS, so it's okay, right? Unless, of course, you're us. The stupid thing kept losing signal in the middle of Cleveland, leaving us to try to navigate our own way through what apparently was baseball game traffic. They had traffic cops directing things, but I have no idea what they were doing... they were making us go through red lights! Finally, we found a place to park. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe, ordered strawberry daquiris and hoped it would at least be a good dinner.

Apparently the Hard Rock Cafe is a huge rip off... Our drinks were $6.99 each and didn't even taste like they had alcohol in them. Our sandwiches were about $12.99 and while they were HUGE they weren't all that great.

Normally, upon visiting a new city, we would walk around and check it out. It was too bloody cold and still raining. So we decided we would try to go see and movie. We asked the waitress and found out there was a theatre in the same plaza, in the basement. We paid and left and took the elevator downstairs... to the sketchiest plaza basement I've ever been to. Only to find out that while they were playing about a dozen movies, they were all the movies we didn't want to see and none of the ones we did want to see (we were thinking Adventureland or Sunshine Cleaning). So that failed too.

In the elevator on the way back up I turned to Fae.
"Why do we always fail?" I asked. We laughed and decided that we would just order payperview back at the hotel and stay warm in bed. We got back to the hotel and decided that the pool looked very enticing, so we got back in the car to go into the weird Cleveland suburb to find a cheap place to buy a bathing suit. The guy at the front desk had given us directions to a Walmart. The last part was "Go down and turn right down Brooksomething, there's a Walmart at the end of that road." He said the real name, but neither of us could remember so we decided that it wouldn't be that hard to find the street that was Brooksomething. We turn and find... Brookhaven, Brookdale, Meadowbrook and Brookshire. All right next to each other. Hmm.

Needless to say, we didn't find the Walmart, but we kept going down the street and eventually found another store and bought some bathing suits, which were quite expensive for suits neither of us planned to ever wear again.

We got back to the hotel, went swimming for about 30 minutes, until we suffocated from the heat of the hot tub, and then went back up to our room to order payperview. Fae took a shower, and I tried to figure out the payperview. After about 45 minutes of trying to work it, and then seeing if maybe there was something on real TV to watch, I called the front desk.

"Hi, I can't seem to get the Payperview to work."
"Yeah, the company we got Payperview from just recently shut down. So we don't have Payperview right now."
"Oh.... Okay then, bye."

Again, we tried to find something on TV. Largely, we failed. Until we found Whose Line Is It Anyway, and excitedly tried to tune to that channel... only to find out that we didn't get that channel.

We woke up this morning with plans to go to the Zoo, but they were very quickly dampened by the cold and the rain. We ate our continental breakfast and left Cleveland behind forever, after having failed at everything.