Cleveland! Land of Dreams!

I didn't know what to expect from our visit to Cleveland, but it ended up being maybe our favorite stop of the trip! I actually have two more posts about it, because I couldn't fit the house from A Christmas Story and the BEST vintage store I've ever been to into one post! I can't wait to share it all with you! But first things first, we stayed on the top floor of this great house. Air Bnb again, of course. It was so cheap and it seemed bigger than our house! We stayed in the Lakewood area of Cleveland.

Big Fun is such a good store! We were able to make it to two out of three locations on our trip. I found it when I was looking for photo booths. The one here wasn't in use, bummer! But it was still amazing! That dog house is front is lockable and you can leave you dog in there while you shop! How convenient.

The whole place is full of old toys and games. Look at all those Care Bears in the window!

And My Little Ponies! The old ones (the good ones!) I had so many when I was a little girl. I didn't see a Pegasus with jewel eyes, which was my favorite one.

Oh man, now I'm seeing what looks like a Bookshelf game! That Mr. President one! I didn't notice that when we were there, we could have added it to our collection.

They had old game boards in the floor. What a great idea! I would love to use this idea in some future house in my future rec room.

There was also this card catalog full of tiny toys! Some vintage, some new, all cheap! I found some tiny vintage cake decorations and other weird little treasures. And pogs! We keep saying we're going to have a pog tournament! We needed slammers, thank goodness for big fun.

We ate lunch at Johnny Mango World cafe.

We pretty much got everything on the menu, which was kind of a weird hodge podge, but it was good. The fried plantains were my favorite! I really need to learn to cook those. So yummy.

You know we had to stop by a monument to "Dogs of All Wars." This is the final resting place of Smokey, or Yorkie Doodle Dandy (how much do I love that nickname???). There is a great Huffington Post article about her here (including a photo of her parachuting!). She was found in a foxhole and become the mascot of a unit in World War Two. Her most famous exploit was helping to run some communication lines through a tunnel, saving days of man power and probably some lives. She is also adorable. Maybe my favorite war dog? We actually first found out about her when we went to the AKC Museum in St. Louis.

What a great monument!

We made it over to Sweet Moses on the recommendation of the guy working at the awesome vintage store I mentioned. It is a restored soda fountain and it has a whole vegan menu! Yay!

Travis had a vegan banana split! It was amazing! I had a chocolate and strawberry sundae that was also good, but not very photogenic. Mmmm. I wish there was a good shop to get vegan ice cream around here.

We ended our day in Cleveland at the movies seeing Fury. It is tradition for us to see a movie on vacation, and Travis couldn't wait any longer to see the one WW2 movie he hasn't seen. That might be an exaggeration, maybe not. It was good though. And I loved Brad Pitt's haircut (I know you were wondering.)

These three silos are outside of a chocolate factory to the south of Cleveland. What a great town. We'll be back for sure.