Indianapolis

We had a bit of a crazy time last week. Chris ended up in hospital after having some chest pains, it turned out that he had an inflamed muscle in his chest, it was a bit of a scare but he's fine now. We had planned to go to Indianapolis at the weekend and considered canceling our trip but in the end we decided to still go.

We left work early on Friday and started our drive up to Indiana. The traffic was slow but we managed to drive to Springfield, Ohio before stopping for the night. We arrived in Indianapolis mid morning on Saturday and parked up at our hotel before heading out for a wonder around the city.

First stop was the delicious South Bend Chocolate Company for a snack. We hadn't done much research about Indianapolis so we sat down with a map and tried to plan our route around the city. Our reason for coming to Indianapolis had been to visit the Indiana State Fair and I hadn't paid much attention to researching what the actual city was like but we were pleasantly surprised, it was really nice.

As we headed towards the city's monuments, we stumbled across a marching band parade which turned out to be the Drum Corps World Championships! I love marching bands so we stood and watched them all for ages.


Chris had read that there was a USS Indianapolis Museum which he wanted to see, it turned out to be inside the war memorial which was weird but both the memorial and museum were really impressive. We didn't have a lot of time so we had to walk around it quickly which was a shame because there were a lot of interesting displays.




After walking through the monuments we headed towards the canal. It was really hot, I think we'd both expected it to be cooler than DC but it was just as warm. The canal was lovely but we ended up walking a lot further than we'd planned to and were both pretty tired so headed back to our hotel to check in.



We stayed in a Crowne Plaza hotel which was set in an old train station. Our room was actually a converted train carriage.



In the late afternoon we headed out to the Indiana State Fair. We had tickets to see the Sara Bareilles and Sugarland concert that evening but wanted to have a look around the fair first. There was loads to see and eat! Chris had a corn dog and I had a hot dog which was very boring because you could get just about anything fried.



Anyone fancy deep fried butter? And how do you deep fry kool-aid?


This was by far the most popular store. It was basically pumped cheese, yuck! Chris loves it and would definitely have got some if the line wasn't so long.


We saw some really cute animals...


And the world's 2nd largest boar...


Then some giant pumpkins...


After lots of walking around, we took our seats in the grandstand for the Sara Bareilles and Sugarland concert which was our main reason for coming all the way to Indianapolis. We had seen Sara Bareilles before at the 9.30 club in DC and her performance tonight was just as brilliant.


What happened after that still makes me start shaking when I think about it. Moments before Sugarland were due to come on stage, the sky turned black and a freak gust of wind caused the stage to come crashing down into the crowd. Watching the stage fall onto hundreds of people was the most terrifying event that I have ever witnessed. Sadly 6 people died and over 40 were injured. We consider ourselves so lucky that we were safe but watching something so horrifying and not being able to do anything to stop it was the most awful thing that I have ever experienced.