Cirque du Columbus

Every time Michelle and I go to Vegas (which has been twice), we always try to catch a Cirque du Soleil show. They are just amazing to take part in. The sound. The colors. You find yourself getting wrapped up in a world of make believe as people perform these extraordinary feats in front of your eyes.

It’s the kind of show that you want to grab your best friend and drag them to go see it as well. Problem is, it’s an expensive pain in the buttocks to drag your friend to Vegas to see a show.

A few weeks back I got an email letting me know that one of their traveling shows, Varekai, was going to be in Columbus. Well, I hopped on ye-ol’ internet and snatched up 4 premium tickets. The original plan was to invite my folks along to go see it. I know that they’d love it and it would be a great time.

Well that didn’t work out.

So we thought it would be a fun time to invite Michelle’s folks along.

Well that didn’t work out.

So we thought it would be a totally cool idea to invite along our friends Bobby & Stephanie since a) they’re almost like family and b) they know the area.

Well that didn’t work out.

Who would have thought it was going to be this tough to give away $75.00 tickets to a Cirque du Soleil show? So we asked our friends Joel and Jarrod along since a) they’re like family and b) they live just down the road from us and c) Jarrod his this really cool Land Rover that I’ve always wanted to ride in.

Thankfully they were totally excited about the idea and we headed off to make plans for the upcoming weekend.

Our first step was to lock down some hotel rooms. For some strange reason we couldn’t find anything open in the entire Columbus area. That seemed rather strange. I mean Cirque is a great show, but they are only have two showings and they could not possible be filling all the rooms in town. Something else must be going on.

Turns out there was. Ohio State was playing at home on Saturday. Oh, but wait there is more. They were playing the University of Texas. DOH!

This was the hyped game to end all hyped games. The local media was insane. “If you were to choose one match up with which to end all college football; if you were to choose a game to be the final game of all time… this would be the game.”

So we ended up getting rooms in a place called Marysville which is about 30 minutes outside of Columbus. It was a nice place and served our needs.

We headed out Saturday afternoon, got checked into the hotel (which was a process in and of itself) and then decided to head into town. The first thing we did was scout out the location of where the show was going to be on Sunday.

Turns out it was in a tent, which turned out to be pretty awesome. From there we couldn’t help ourselves we had to head down town to see what the madness was like near Ohio State.

Madness.

The swarms of people that were just walking the streets or making use of beer-bongs was overwhelming. We saw this one guy in a Texas shirt being harassed by some ladies and we decided it was time that we geared up for our own safety.

Joel as it turns out was wearing a brown shirt with a cowboy on it. (Not a good idea when you could be mistaken for a Texas fan). We whipped over to the side of the road (Joel pulled on a sweatshirt) and purchased some bright red Ohio State shirts and put them on in the car.

After that we tooled around the town first looking for a place to go shopping (which everything seemed to be closed for the game). We ended up heading out towards the Eastland Mall, which was a scene out of our own South Town Mall here in the Fort with all the construction they had going on there. It was a lot spooky.

So we broke out Maggy (the on board navigation system in the Land Rover) and went hunting.

No such luck on that one either. While its extremely handy, you can’t really search by type of restaurant, only the name.

As luck would have it, Michelle and I spotted what seemed like a really cool restaurant on our way back from the Hocking Hills area back in July and we decided to give it a try.

We had located several really nice steak houses that we wanted to go to, but as you can imagine 4 people in shorts and red Ohio State shirts don’t really fall into the dress code.

So we fumbled our way back to a place called Confluence Park Restaurant. We weren’t quite sure if we could get in there either. There was a mix of people in tuxes and shorts with glow sticks.

Jarrod was the only one brave enough so we sent him in to see what he could find out. 10 minutes later he came back. Not only can we get in, but they had a table waiting for us.

This restaurant was awesome. We sat outside on this huge deck out over the Scioto River with a view of the city at night time. They had these outdoor fire pits burning and it was just amazing. Nothing like a little steak by the moon light; it turned out to be a great night.

We got back to Marysville just as the game was getting over… Ohio State broke down there at the end and lost. I’m glad we didn’t stick around downtown to see what that turned out like.

We got up the next morning, and hit the Waffle House.

Wow, let me tell you that was an experience. I do not believe that I have ever had the pleasure of dining at one of these eating establishments, but let me tell you it was an experience. We crammed ourselves into this tiny booth at the back of the restaurant (there was no way 4 meals were going to fit on that table!). The ordering process was awesome as our waitress called it in, but everything from then on out kinda went down hill.

One interesting thing to note is that more than 50% of the wait staff was with child. Must be something in the Syrup.

From there we headed back down town to see the show.

It was awesome. Much better than I expected (considering it was in a tent). A good time was had by all. If you are interested in this performance, you can actually rent or purchase the DVD.

At around 4:30 their time we made our way back to the Fort. We made short stop in Rockford, OH since we got pulled over by a local cop and issued a warning for “rolling” through a stop sign. But it turned out for the best since one of the people who work for me owns a really cool ice cream store there in town (the Tastee Twirl). So if you’re ever in the area, make sure you stop in.

All in all, it was a great weekend.