Madison

So I love visiting state capitol buildings or even city hall buildings, it is something about the architecture that I just love to see. I have been wanting to visit Madison for a while so that we could go to the capitol and it just hasn't happened, but this Saturday we needed an excuse to get away from the house so we weren't stuck helping our landlords repaint it all day. So we went to Madison kind of on a whim, without looking up anything just with knowing the approximate location of the capitol building and a map of the state that really didn't help us to well once we got there. Somehow we did find the capitol building, okay it was pretty easy once we got on a street without trees so that we could see it. We just missed the farmers market which was happening right in the area, sad because I was dying for some fresh cherries. We decided then to take a walk down the street with restaurants to find some lunch and we found ourselves on the outdoor state street mall. Apparently this was the happening place because while eating lunch out on the sidewalk we had some good people watching. We had heard that Madison was like hippie town and even compared to Boulder. I would have to agree now. We even saw bike cops giving out tickets to bike riders running the lights, that was random. While Brad and I were in the camping store I heard what I thought was a marching band coming down the road, so I walked over to the window, I was on the second floor, and I see a demonstration of protesters walking down State Street. Brad and I were pretty intrigued so we followed them to the capitol and even listened to some of the speeches being made. Don't worry we made sure we kept our distance from the action. After we got our fill of that we randomly drove around the campus area, Brad gave $ 0.75 to a beggar, we asked a random couple for directions and any suggestions on what to see in the area, and ended up at some park on the lake that had free firewood and bonfire pits (if we would have had matches we might have stayed for a bonfire). On the way home we decided to stop at the outlets to get hiking shoes for Brad and ended up with some pretty good deals. For not planning anything it turned out to be a pretty good day. Though next time I am at least going to get a good map.

Here is the Wisconsin Capitol Building

Here is the protest from the store window walking down the street

I love this shot because it has the capitol, the protesters, and a bike rider, pretty much sums up that city

Here is Brad trying to fit in with his mad face from where we were listening.

Here is the city skyline from across the lake at the park we found.