Beer, Brats, Bowling and Bikes - Milwaukee

Looking for lunch in small town America

can be challenging. I often turn to Yelp as we hit a main street.

Today turns up a truly OMG moment when the cafe we are considering turns out to have scored the worst reviews I’ve ever seen. One reviewer had spotted a cockroach in the loo and another reported seeing the chef spit in someone’s drink. We keep driving.

Sundays are tricky in the small towns. Little is open. So it is that we pass hungrily through several flyspeck towns before, in some sort of ravenous desperation, we stop in

quaint little Kewaskum Village, Wisconsin, where the motorbikes are whooshing noisily through the streets.

We’ve spotted a funny little Coffee Corner cafe and we are going in, no matter what.

And we behold two lovely, hearty country girls bustling behind a high counter of delicious-looking patisserie and wraps and in front of a ceiling-high blackboard listing almost every gourmet coffee and coffee style that there is. Several student types sit at tables or counters with laptops. Newspapers lie invitingly on

tables.

We just can’t believe our luck.

Since we are in the cheese state of Wisconsin, I order their gourmet multi-cheese melt. B opts for a Caesar salad. We both order macchiatos. The coffees are superb, the salad’s ok but my Wisconsin cheesy treat

is just died-and-gone-to-heaven gorgeous.

Our destination today is Milwaukee. It’s a tough old city and I’m here to tell you it has terrible roads.

Bruce says its big thing is the Three Bs - Beer, Brats and Bowling.

We bucket our way into the city over ribbed roads, past vacant lots and derelict buildings.

The city proper looks more prosperous and some of the

buildings are truly handsome old things.

Our hotel is the Aloft, right on the Milwaukee river. Fabulous hotel and I am thrilled with the river and city view. My first impression as we unload the car is that it is a seagull city. The mournful songs of herring gulls. They not only wheel through the air but they occupy the river like flocks of ducks, feeding enthusiastically on something that seems to ride on the current.

Our exploratory walk takes us over the river and into, of all things, Irish Town. It is one Irish pub after another.

We retrace our steps and head towards the business district.

Here is the fine old newspaper in the most massive building with the most ferocious security I have ever seen. A big signs warns against bringing weapons into the premises.

Getting into the premises at all looks like the issue to

me. I wonder where the door is.

There’s a big beer emphasis in this part of town. Faux German facades on buildings, bars…and lots of restaurants.

As we check the menu of a modern-looking Italian restaurant, a bloke snappily dressed in shorts and runners and sitting alone at an outside table calls out that we’d really like this place. The food is fabulous.

Well, the last time a local gave us that sort of recommendation, it was brilliant. We tell the bloke so and a conversation ensues. He invites us to sit down and have a drink with him. He’s buying. And, by the way, he has never eaten at this restaurant. He never eats after breakfast.

Only drinks. And smokes Mores.

What an interesting exchange. Of course, we buy the next round and we learn lots about him, his family and, importantly Milwaukee. He asks if he reminds us of anyone. Er, yes. A few years older, he could be Alan Alda. He’s a rabid right-winger and owns lots of guns, he says. He hates the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel because it is too liberal.

An aggressive African-American beggar approaches us, leaning over the table and wanting to shake hands with us all. Our new friend takes his hand and tells him off very firmly,

then turns his back, rifles though his billfold and gives the man money. At that moment, two men erupt from the restaurant and tell the beggar to go away. To my astonishment, he challenges them. Voices are raised. Chests puff out. I am rattled. No, terrified. The beggar lopes away, shouting abuse behind him. I say I am glad no one had guns. One of the men says, of course he has a gun. He’s a policeman.

Our new friend says he does not have a gun with him. He's taken to carrying a simpler defence weapon. He produces a high intensity flashlight and briefly blinds me with it. I am not pleased.

But I am impressed. I want one.

A middle-aged bloke turns up carrying a basket of tennis balls. My tennis coach, says our friend who is three sheets to the wind by now. We’re going to play.

It is hard to imagine.The coach gets a drink and then disappears to have a cigarette unseen.

I wonder what sort of tennis this will be.

We take our leave and toddle off down the road looking for dinner.

We find a nice umbrellaed table on the street at Buck Bradley’s Saloon and Eatery. It is in one of the very old and lovely buildings on this Old World Third Street.

Nothing to drink, thanks. We order hearty meals. The beggar turns up again. What the? Even I swear at him this time.

Buck’s turns out to be not only a decent restaurant but also an historic one. It is in one of the earliest buildings in the street

and it brags the longest linear bar east of the Mississippi River.

It is absurdly long.

When they’re busy, they need five barmen to cover it.

It is not busy tonight.

We meander off for a pleasant riverside stroll to look at the history of the area and commune with the huge herring gulls before we repair to our lovely hotel room and the traveller’s regular duty, getting a load of washing through the guest laundry.

This is our first Aloft hotel. It will not be our last. It

is a relatively new chain and it has been designed with aesthetics and originality as well as superior logistics and ergonomics. The rooms are compact but feature a long wall couch which enables very neat organisational possibilities for guests. The desks are at the window. Downstairs there are 24-hour refreshments in an area which materialises into a hot breakfast cafe in the

mornings. The pool is terrific. The lounge areas are beaut. The WiFi is snappy. We sleep like logs. Yep. Aloft is on our travel radar now.

There is something we HAVE to do before leaving Milwaukee; visit the Harley Davidson Museum.

This makes the fourth B in Milwaukee's B bonnet.

Bikes! The Harley museum is a big deal. People come from all over the world. We’re not aficionados but we admire Harley Davidson as a successful employee-owned company.

The museum is immense.

I hear all sorts of accents among the visitors, fellow Aussies among them.

Despite the noisiness of motorcycles, the Harley museum is hushed.

There's a sense of reverence. Bikers speak softly. They wander about slowly, in awe. They point and photograph and nudge each other.

There is a great deal to admire. It is a museum equivalent of shiny Harley chrome.

The hundreds of bikes on show go right back to the crudest first concepts

...things with leather straps instead of bike chains.

They include all sorts of commercial manifestations of motorbike, sidecar bikes, war bikes, racing bikes, show bikes…

There is a massive wall devoted to bikers, each little square image contained a picture and video profile of bikers male and female.

There is a vast wall of petrol tanks.

There are biker belts, badges of all the Harley clubs of the world, helmets (not that they wear them hereabouts), engines, stabilisers…

While most of the museum, which is on several vast storeys, is do-not-touch, it culminates with a big section of bikes on which one is invited to sit and pose and fantasise.

Yes, of course I do. I pick a snappy gold number and ham it up.

Between you and me, I can't imagine anything more hair-disturbingly nerve-wracking than travelling on one of these, let alone than here in one of America's no-helmet law states.

We return to the dear old olive green Rogue,

packed to the gunwales with luggage, and purr off to see if the vast coils and loops of spaghetti highway junctions whence one must leave Milwaukee will defeat Bruce's astute navigational skills.

Only momentarily - and we are off on the road to Chicago.