I hit a huge milestone on my Foursquare today… 25,000 check-ins!



I love my Foursquare! 🙂

This evening we walked across the Purple People Bridge…

Over to Newport on the Levee…

Go go bowling at Star Lanes on the Levee…









Genifer whopped me in the first game…

My two-handed bowling style wasn’t working nearly as well as it was to Western Bowl.
And it worked even worse in the second game we bowled…



I stormed back to win game three by the narrowest of margins…

And Genifer whooped me again in game number four…



We snacked on some soft pretzel sticks…

And they must have rejuvenated me because I took game five…

And Genifer took our final game…


Professional bowlers, we’re not. But bowling is fun!



🙂

There’s been a lot of negativity focused at the new Horseshoe Casino. But we still don’t
care. We’re not those downtown elitist “holy than thou” sort of people. Those people are
snobs and need to get over their own egos. We’ll give anything a try. We think the more
diverse dining and entertainment options there are downtown, the more people will visit.
The more people that visit and frequent downtown, the more new places keep popping up.
So the more the merrier in our opinion. We don’t judge. We just want to have bunches and
bunches of options in downtown Cincinnati and lotsa fun in all within walking distance of
home. So this evening we walked to the casino to visit Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville…












We started off with these amazing looking Conch Fritters…

And were delicious! They’re the best Conch Fritters I’ve had since being in the Bahamas.
And when we were at the casino for the grand opening celebration, we noticed the size
of Margaritaville’s Volcano Nachos, and had been thinking about trying them all week…

After stuffing our faces with their deliciousness for over a half hour, we hardly even
put a dent in them…

So good. But sooo filling.


After lunch, we wandered around the casino a bit…

After lunch we played some penny slots. Which was weird to us because it’s 20 cents
a spin. So how is that penny slots? Anyway. We played put $5 in the machine and at
our highest, we reached $35. When we finally cashed out, we made a whooping $20.02!
Whoo-hoo! Penny slots are kinda fun. I could see us spending five bucks on the slots
when stop in for a bite. The casino isn’t so bad. At all. 🙂

El Coyote is opening a new downtown location in the old Cincy on Sixth/Cadillac Ranch…

In my opinion, you can never have too much Mexican food nearby. Especially with nada
across the street being delicious but kinda pricey, and Bakersfield in OtR being equally
as delicious but perpetually packed to the gills with people. Cincy on Sixth wasn’t bad,
and El Coyote couldn’t possibly be any worse than Cadillac Ranch. But I couldn’t imagine
El Coyote being better than Rio Grande.

Nonetheless, welcome to the neighborhood El Coyote.

We shared this incredible fish sammich at Local’s for our Lenten Fish Fry Friday.

And that means, it’s time for dinner in Arnold’s courtyard…



Mmmmm… Keith’s Way BBQ Burger! YUM!

We love our Thursday nights at Arnold’s. 🙂

It was a grey and rainy evening. Bleh.

I got my haircut today. This isn’t really important except for it took me over to a part of
downtown Cincinnati that I don’t really frequent. After my haircut, I stopped to check out
the progress of the construction of the new Dunnhumby building at Fifth and Race Streets…


That’s quite the hole they’re digging there. Then I walked down the block to get another look
at the garage at Fourth and Race Streets. It’s slated to become a new 30-story mixed-use
high-rise with a rumored 15,000 square foot grocery store. I’ve heard so many rumors about
this space… I’ve heard that it was going to be a movie theatre, then a bowling alley, then
a different grocery. So I’m not buying into the hype just yet. Only when the parking garage
finally begins to come down will I start to get all excited about the possibilities this project
could bring to an area of downtown that is pretty barren of both activity and entertainment
options. Anyway, here’s the garage that could be making way for the new development…


Walk back through Tower Place, I was shocked to find that all the restaurants in the once
vibrant Tower Place food court have closed. The only restaurant still open is a Subway.

The only thing that would suck about this development is that the place I get my haircut
will have to find a new home. I just hope they stay downtown. Because I really like they
way they’ve always cut my hair. I guess it’s a small price to pay in the continual evolution
of downtown Cincinnati. It just keeps getting better and better down here. 🙂

This evening the Horseshoe Casino was having their grand opening. We don’t really care
much about casinos. Or gambling. But hey, different strokes for different folks, right? I
don’t judge. What we were interested in is that there is a Bobby’s Burger Palace inside
the casino. BBP is owned by celebrity chef, Bobby Flay. We love all of his cooking shows
on Food Network. And… Bobby Flay was going to be at his newest BBP for the big grand
opening! Living just four blocks from the new casino, we decided to walk over, check it
out the opening, get a couple of burgers and maybe see Bobby Flay. What’s odd about this
opening is that it’s taking place at 8:30pm. And they were expecting around 40,000 people
for the pre-opening celebration. Some people just can’t wait to have their money taken
from them, can they? I still don’t judge. And when we arrived, there were a lot of people
but definitely not 40,000…

Mayor Mallory was on hand to open the doors…

And then the fireworks started…












After about 25 minutes of fireworks and 10 minutes of trying to circumnavigating
the massive line to get in to the casino…


Once inside, we immediately tracked down Bobby’s Burger Palace…


There was a bit of a line to order burgers…

But we lucked out and found two seats at their little bar…




And while we sitting there, Bobby Flay came over to do an interview!


How cool was that? We saw Bobby Flay!!! Then we ordered a couple of burgers and some fries…

Genifer ordered the Santa Fe burger, and I ordered Crunchburger…

The Crunchburger had double American cheese and potato chips… on the burger! BBP’s
burgers are delicious! And really very reasonable! My burger was just $6.75, Genifer’s
was $7.50 and our huge side of fries was only $3! When we were done eating, we went
to see if we could get a photo with Bobby Flay…

But as we headed over towards him, he disappeared into the kitchen and he never
reemerged. So we didn’t get to snap a photo with Bobby. But it was still awesome
to get to see him. And our first experience at BBP was pretty amazing!

All and all, it was mission accomplished at the grand opening of Horseshoe Casino!
And we didn’t even lose any of our money. 🙂

This morning we walked up to new Over-the-Rhine sports/soccer bar, Rhinehaus to watch
the North London Derby… Tottenham Hotspur playing host to my beloved Arsenal.


It was a really good match. But Spurs ended up getting the best of Arsenal today, 2-1.
After the match, we walked over to Bakersfield for a delicious lunch of tacos and guac.



Top it all off with a one-point Michigan hoops win over Michigan State…

And it made for a pretty great afternoon. 🙂