Wine and Spirits Travel

I had never been to Milwaukee before. I didn’t make it there during my traveling years and I hadn’t been there in the seven years I’ve been living in the Midwest. When I received an invitation to cover one of the biggest music festivals in the world that happened to be in Milwaukee, it didn’t take me long to say, “Yes!” My friend Lisa, who was living in Green Bay at the time, met me in Milwaukee for a girls’ weekend. Margaret Casey of Visit Milwaukee picked us up at the Hilton for our first day of tasting and touring. Our first stop was at Indulgence Chocolatiers . I wish we had a place like this in Champaign. Julie, the owner of Indulgence, fell in love with the chocolate shops in Europe and decided to open one in Milwaukee . She creates a selection of chocolate truffles, barks, and bars. Then, she pairs them with your choice of white wine, red wine, beer, whiskey, or cheese. Everything sounded scrumptious and we finally settled on sharing chocolate &...

Long before I wrote about travel, food, wine, spirits, or even tennis, I was an entertainment writer. I was young and it was a lot of fun going into New York City and seeing plays, movie previews, and concerts. I knew it wasn’t the kind of life that I could keep up with once I was an “adult,” but it was a great time for a while. I’ve recently received a lot of opportunities to cover music. While I’m not going to make a full time job out of it and trips into the “city” – now Chicago – are not something I can handle nightly, I do like to go to a concert and meet a band whenever possible. I was especially excited to see Soul Asylum and meet the band backstage at the House of Blues in Chicago. My friend John accompanied me into downtown and we arrived early enough to do some exploring around Navy Pier and enjoy a cocktail or two. When we arrived at the House of Blues, there was still plenty of time left before the concert so I asked for a tour. The only House of ...

I woke up in my suite at Hotel Lone knowing it would be my last morning in Istria. Although my friend Lynn and I would be staying in Croatia a few more days, this was the last day we would be spending with the Share Istria group, a terrific set of guys we had gotten to know well. It was the first place Lynn and I had our own hotel rooms so we met down at the restaurant for breakfast.  The Hotel Lone in Rovinj has one of the biggest buffet breakfasts I have ever seen, and it was included with our room. The rows of fruit, cheese, Danishes, croissants, meats, eggs, yogurt, and covered half of the large dining room. I took my selection of a yogurt smoothies, chocolate croissant, brie and spinach quiche out to the deck. It looked to be another comfortably warm day in this area of Croatia .  We sipped our cappuccinos for a bit before going to our rooms to get ready for a full day. Goran Franinovic of the Istria Tourism Board had been our guide ...

My friend Lynn and I slept well in our last night at BiVillage in Fazana, Croatia. We were comfortable in our little cottage just a short walk from the Adriatic Sea. We could have easily just stayed there and enjoyed the beach, but we had plenty more to see in Istria . After a breakfast of fruit, cheese, yogurt, and croissants, we headed back to the house to get packed up and wait for Goran of the Visit Istria Tourism office to pick us. It was the fifth day we would be traveling in the familiar van with the other writers and guests, Rocky, Nicolas, Andras, and Gyorgy. It was a great group and we were all having lots of fun together on the Share Istria Adventure . Our first stop of the day was in Labin . I could never get tired of these small Istrian towns as they each had their own personality. Labin was once a mining town and we got to actually go through a replica of a mine. I don’t know how those men did it, my back was hurting from being hunched ove...