Cleveland's Little Italy with Family

Becky and I passed through Cleveland many times on our way to visit Katie in Michigan but we had never stopped there until today when we came to town for Lizzie and Lewie's wedding. We had an uneventful little over three hour drive from Buffalo on a very nice day. We arrived at our hotel at 3 pm.

The hotel was in a nice location a few

blocks from where the wedding would be taking place and in an area near several museums, hospitals, parks and a large university campus. Plenty of restaurants too. The area was University Circle.

We found out right away that there was going to be a dinner at 8 pm with Dan and Liz and Liz's brothers and sisters at a restaurant in the nearby Little Italy neighborhood. We really didn't want to wait that long for dinner and we knew it would probably be closer to 9 by the time dinner would actually be served to such a large group so we opted out of that dinner but planned to stop by during the evening to say hi to everyone.

We came down to the lobby around 5:30 and found Betsy and Joe. They had also talked about going to that dinner with Dan but thought it was too late for them. They wanted to eat soon. We told them we wanted to eat over in Little Italy but they were looking for somewhere a little closer. We walked with them around the couple of blocks near the hotel but they decided to come to Little Italy and have dinner with us. That worked for us because we had been hoping to treat them to a dinner to celebrate their recent 50th wedding anniversary. We walked over to Little Italy which was about a 10 minute or so trip. Joe was struggling with his legs, hip and back.

We had researched the restaurants in the area and had picked out several that we were interested in for dinner. With Joe's mobility issues we went to the first Italian restaurant on the street and fortunately it was one of the ones on our list. We were able to get an outside patio table at Etna Ristorante. 

The dinner was wonderful and the wine was great. We sat there from about 6 pm until 7:30. Becky and Joe had a good shrimp scampi dinner while Betsy and I both had a black squid ink pasta and shrimp dinner which I loved. Betsy and Becky had some gelato for dessert while Joe and I had a couple of Peroni beers.

Becky and I wanted to continue the evening by going down the street where Dan and the Zorzanello family but Betsy and Joe were tired and really didn't want to walk any more. They were going to call a cab but instead I arranged a Lyft ride back to the hotel for them. This was the first time they ever used an Uber/Lyft ride. That worked fine for them and got them back to the hotel.

Becky and I walked down the street towards the Angelos Nido Italia Restaurant. We were across the street but Nick saw us first and pointed us out to his dad. Dan was very happy to see us as we came across the street. It was almost 8 pm and we did let him know right away that we weren't staying for dinner and most of the Zorzanellos were not there yet. We would learn later that several of them including Liz would not make it to the dinner because of travel problems getting into town. The hurricane had impacted a lot of travel plans. Liz's flight got cancelled and she would not arrive until after midnight.

We hung around for a while and then Dan took us for a walk up and down the street to tell us about his recent job opportunities. We went back to the restaurant and had another Peroni while some of the other folks had dinner. Lizzie and Lewie would show up much later. I enjoyed taking with Liz's sisters Carolyn and Mary whom I hadn't seen since Dan and Liz's wedding. We had a nice time hanging out and stayed there until about 9:30 when we walked back to the hotel.