I always get SO antsy to travel around this time of year. The weather is cold and gross and all I want to do is be outside somewhere with nice weather! Last January I got so stir crazy that I booked us a trip to Portland… this year I’m trying to avoid that so I’m reminiscing about some of our favorite trips instead.

The first time we went to Milwaukee together, was on my birthday weekend, which is also right around when we started dating. Brian spent his first year of school studying architecture at UWM, and he really loves the city. We’d kind of talked about doing a long bike ride somewhere, so one day I suggested we ride to Milwaukee for my birthday, so we did!

The morning we woke up to leave, it was like 50 degrees and raining, so we took our bikes on the train to Kenosha and rode from there. That shortened our distance to only about 48 miles, which was a good length for our first ride together.

We used Couchsurfer to find somewhere to stay, and we ended up living in a literal closet for the weekend. It was SO TINY, it only fit a mattress on the ground with no room around it. Wall to wall mattress, and a sloped ceiling that was 5′ tall at the highest point. It was hilarious.

We spent our days wandering around, visiting Brian’s favorite places in the city, drinking good beer and coffee, and eating good food. The weather was so beautiful too, it almost always is on my birthday.