I want to take a minute here to acknowledge Enterprise Car Rentals. I used to skip them because I just was not happy with them. I am not sure why, but I have kind of always rented cars like I buy some stuff. They are all as good as the other company. And for some reason, Enterprise was not my favorite. But they are now. The last three times I rented, it was from them, and pickup went well each time. But this time they outdid themselves. I had picked up the car in Chicago for a one-day rental at 9:30 am. That meant I did not have to return it until 9:30 am the next day. Also, when I picked it up, it had a quarter of a tank of gas. The manager at pickup told me to return it with a quarter tank, and we would be all set. I ended up putting just under half a tank in it and hadn't used that much of it by the time we arrived in Chicago.
I had also planned to keep the car until the next morning so we could drive to dinner, but that changed when I found out it cost $50 to park at the hotel and the restaurant was about four blocks away. So I decided to return the car early. When I got there to return it, the manager of the Milwaukee branch told me that since I returned it early, she was going to refund $50 of my rental, and she saw I had extra gas (above that quarter of a tank), so she credited me for that. Unbelievable.
You can drive from Chicago to Milwaukee in about an hour and forty minutes on Interstate 94, but we left Chicago at 10:30 and couldn’t check into our hotel in Milwaukee until 3:00 pm. So I was determined to drive along the shore of Lake Michigan as much as possible, which meant asking Siri for continuous directions to the next point north. If you tried to skip a spot on the shoreline, she would take you out to the Interstate because it was “faster.” We didn’t want fast.
After lunch, we finished our drive north to Milwaukee and to our home for the last two nights before we board the ship, Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel. This is a very cool hotel that is entirely FILLED with art. There is art everywhere. They have a huge gallery in the lobby, and there are art installations all over the hotel, including in every room. Also, in every room is a ukulele and a Victrola record player. Seriously. The hotel is beautiful, and the beds are vastly superior to those in the Airbnb in Chicago. Sadly, the pillows are horrid. More and more, I have come to believe that the older you get, the more you need to sleep in your own bed, which is a problem for those who love to travel.
We had reservations for dinner at Zerlattii, which the Eater website called “the best Italian restaurant in Milwaukee.” Apparently, there are not many Italian restaurants, so this one was just “fine.” Or maybe I am now ruined for all future restaurant meals because of our dinner at Rose Mary? Could be ?.
That about covers our transition day. I have a few rainy photos for you, and that’s it. I am including a few other photos I took with my iPhone as I walked back after returning the car and of the Saint Kate lobby to show you their cool galleries. But I am writing this at 4:28 am on Saturday morning. I am aboard Viking’s Octantis, and WOW! What a ship. More about that later. Not to mention our full day in Milwaukee.
