Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery tour rocks!

When researching brewery tours to take while in Milwaukee, Lakefront Brewery got the best reviews, hands down. In addition, I wanted to check out Lakefront since it is the country’s oldest certified organic brewery (the ESB organic beer was tasty).

Phil and I had a great time on the tour! For $6, we were incredibly entertained by the comedic Curtsy (anytime someone snapped a photo, he shouted to tag him on Facebook) and sampled four tasty brews (two at the beginning, one in the middle and one in the end). My favorite was the Wheat Monkey. I think it’s my new favorite beer.

At the end of the tour, Curtsy convinced some volunteers to reenact the famous Laverne and Shirley sitcom opening. Check out the hilarious video below to see how much fun we were having.

Our time in Milwaukee is done, and now we’re heading to Howards Grove, a suburb of Sheboygan, to visit Phil’s grad school buddies.

Charles Allia Art Museum Mansion

Milwaukee seems to have a good mix of public and private art galleries. We got a glimpse of the Milwaukee Art Museum earlier today and then headed to Charles Allis Art Museum, which is the former Tudor mansion of a Milwaukee mover and shaker couple from the turn of the century. The Allis family amassed a large collection of art from around the world with the intent to bequest their home and collection to Milwaukee County so it can be appreciated for centuries to come.

For me, there’s something special about walking through a museum that used to be a private residence. Paintings seem more spectacular when hung above a fireplace where their former owners admired them as opposed to in a formal gallery. (In college, I wrote a paper on the differences in viewing experiences for public and private museums and used the National Gallery and Phillips Collection in D.C. as examples.)

The Allis collection includes a lot of Asian art (check out the 18th Century folding screen photo) and American paintings. The home’s décor is beautiful, and I was tickled to walk through the butler pantry and see the old intercom system with the rooms still labeled.

I wish we were able to spend more time in the Riverwest neighborhood, which has a lot of independent galleries and shops, but we just drove through quickly on the way to our brewery tour.

Wiener schnitzel wonders -- and more pancakes!

I heart Wisconsin pancakes! In Hayward with Sarah a couple weeks ago, I sampled sausage-filled lumberjack hot cakes. Today, I tried German apple pancakes with Hungarian sausage, and they were a cross between a funnel cake, stuffed French toast and pancakes. AMAZING!

During lunch, Phil and I engaged in an enthralling conversation about famous Germans at the historic, kitschy Karl Ratzsch (opened in 1904) in downtown Milwaukee. Our brief list was quite pathetic – Hitler, Heimlich and Hansel and Gretel --- until our Twitter peeps helped us out with a more extensive list (sorry, Bach).