The next morning we had our brunch at the Inn. Everything was amazing, they gave us hot complimentary “Monkey Bread” which we had never had before. It tasted basically like mashed up cinnamon rolls, rolled up in a ball, with gooey brown sugar icing all over it. It was heavenly. After breakfast we drove over to the shopping district that we never found the day before. It was ridiculously close to the Inn, I’m not sure what happened that caused us to get lost. The Coventry shopping area was sort of a let down. There were a few shops and places to eat, but it was really mediocre, it took us all of maybe a half hour before we left. We had one more stop though before heading home, “The Christmas Story House”.
We drove through more gross areas to finally wind up in a factory area of Cleveland reminiscent of areas here in Buffalo. The only difference was their’s appeared to still be active. We arrived on the street where the house was located, a truly depressing site. The street was pretty ghetto, run down houses everywhere, spray painted buildings, and then tucked right in the middle was the fully restored “Christmas Story” house. It was really bizarre. Luckily, the weather that day was gorgeous, the sun was out and the sky was blue, and there were people waiting for their tour of this legendary house. We had a good 15 minutes to kill before our tour started, so we went into the Christmas Story store across the street because I was determined to buy an official leg lamp. I got lucky. There were 4 sizes, the biggest was almost too big, and the next sized down appeared to be normal. The other two sizes were like mini lamps. They were sold out of most of the lamps accept they had some of the normal sized models left. I didn’t care about the price. This was going to be one awesome way to remember our trip here. $150.00 later, and I was the proud owner of this lamp.
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| I will be placing this in our bay window for the holidays! |
We stopped in the Christmas Story Museum that was right next to the store, both across the street from the actual house. The museum was kinda neat, but nothing all that special. In the corner of one of the rooms, there was a man selling a “Where are they now” DVD and autographed pictures of himself. He was the original guy in the movie who delivered the “Major Award”. He was interesting for maybe 2 minutes, but then went on way too long, making it sort of awkward because clearly, we were trying to leave.
The tour was kind of cool. We all filed in and listened to a history lesson about the area and the house. It was actually interesting. When she was finished, we were free to roam the house and take pictures.
On the way home, we took a detour and stopped in Pittsburgh to the IKEA. We love it there, you can spend a ton of time there getting ideas and looking at furniture. I wish we had one here in Buffalo. When we got home, we were super exhausted. It was a lot to do in 2 days, but ended up being a memorable trip that we will never forget.
