Day 2 March 6 Saturday

Forgot to mention that the service at Mader's was below par, everyone's food was good except mine. For 3$ more I got the veal schnitzel which was over fried, so next time it would be the pork shank - if again. We arrived at Michelle’s and Mark’s home at 7:45 last night. Off for a Milwaukee fish fry Friday night. We decided to go to a new place about 6 blocks from their house. Well it was packed full and we went another 6 miles to the Schwabenhof restaurant in Menomonee Falls. - http://www.schwabenhofbanquets.com/ - This is a old standby. Good beer – for me – deep fried cod and chicken, with baked potato, potato pancakes, coleslaw and all you want to eat for $10.95. We waited in the lounge for quite sometime for getting there at 8:15, left at 9:30. Visited for a while and went to the Hampton Inn in Brookfield for the eve. The gal behind the desk how our trip went we said fine and that we just ate at the Schwabenhof restaurant, she said it is her favorite fish fry restaurant! And we agree.

Today we started out for a early lunch. We went to the Latin quarter to eat at LaPerla, a nice Mexican restaurant. Home made salsa and chips, cheese enchilada for Shirleen, I tamales with rice, beans and salad, oh ya a margarita. Michelle had a combo plate of chili rellino, chimi, Mark chicken chimi, ground beef taco and pork burrito. Then off to the museum to view the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible. The first scrolls were found by a Bedouin in 1947. He found a number of earthen jars some empty, some with pieces of the documents at the bottom of the vessel, and a couple with intact vellum sheets. It was interesting how small pieces of the scroll which may have had 6 words on one line and 4 on the next line – turned out to have the paragraph completed by the scholars. Not sure what that meant? This exhibit had many articles of common day life. Sandals, many pottery lamps, some of brass; many coinages, parts of carved cornerstones. There were many of the tools which were used in digging some of the areas where they were found. St. John’s University rendition of the Bible started in 1998 to finish next year. It is handsomely decorated by verse font’s and pictorials of parts of the verse. Must have been 2 feet high and a foot or so cross. Most were from the Old Testament and toward the end of the exhibit the New Testament with writings from Luke, Paul, The Last Supper. They had a wailing wall where there were many written notes placed in the wall.

The museum is rather large and we had not much time to check out anything but went to the butterfly house. This reminds one of spring.

Now it was time to figure out where we wanted to eat, wondered if there were any new places close to downtown. Well that was the Hyatt, but to park it was 15 to 20$, scratch that. Because Dan Golke, who placed third in the American Idol, sang at the Turner Hall in downtown Milwaukee. If you bought a cd of his at the Halle you could enter free. A line third deep reached around three blocks waiting to get in.

Down to Mader’s (no not the Hudson in Car’s) restaurant one of the fine German restaurants in Milwaukee on Third street. http://www.madersrestaurant.com/. They are 108 years old and has that German motife to fit the culture. As a walk in we had a half hour wait, not bad. When seated we ordered our beverages, pop’s and water around, Shirleen a glass of cabernet, Estrella and myself a liter of Spaten Dunkel. We ordered some Rueben balls, quite a take off from the norm, they had the Ruben filling wrapped in a spring roll deep fried, with Dusseldorf mustard, tasty. The bread was a nicely flavored potato roll. The food Shirleen ordered her Filet Mignon with Bearnaise sauce, whipped potato and baby spinach, Michelle a German Sampler – beef roulaud, pork schnitzel and sauerbraten with a dumpling kraut and red kraut, Mark the pork schnitzel with spaetzles, mine was a veal schnitzel with spaetzles and kraut.

Tomorrow is another day - Jerry