"Milwaukee is a classy place."

The highlight of Jenn's visit to Milwaukee was Friday night when we went on the Lakefront Brewery tour. While we waited for the tour to begin it was too difficult to get the bartender's attention so we had to begin the tour sober. Sobriety lasted about 5 minutes.

When the tour group reached the brewery floor we went straight to the tap. Our guide explained the 4 types of beers that they were serving that day - including the fresh (tapped that morning) Cherry beer. The guide also told us that during any time of the tour, if we needed to leave the group to "top off", we should just make our way back to the tap and the bartender there would help us.

This was my second time on the Lakefront tour, however, with a quick show of hands the tour guide found out that most of us had been on the tour before, about half of us had been on it more than 5 times and maybe 20 of the group had been on it more than 10 times. This truly is a gem of Milwaukee.

I learned very little during the tour - perhaps this was due to the 5 trips to the tap. Jenn only made it 4 times, but she was drinking the dark beer. This was all in the course of an hour.

The funniest part of the trip was when we were near Bernie's Beer Chalet. Bernie is the mascot for the Milwaukee Brewers. During baseball games, he usually stays in his Beer Chalet, which is located above left field. He has a slide and he dances up there, and he probably puts back a few brewskies as well. A few years ago, when County Stadium was torn down to build Miller Park, the Lakefront Brewery bought his Chalet from the old stadium. They now have it in the middle of their brewery. As I was explaining the story to Jenn, she scoffed at the idea of it being a "chalet." I told her to ask anyone in the group what it's called and they will agree with me. She asked a drunk, who happened to be sitting on the front "stoop" of the chalet, what was the building in which he was in. He replied, "This is the Beer Chalet." Jenn laughed and turned to me in amazement. When that guy had gone she turned to another guy in the hut and asked him the name of the little building. He too said, "This is the Beer Chalet" but then to wipe away any disbelief from Jenn he added, "We're very Europe-ian (pronounced your-rope-i-an) in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is a classy place." This made us all laugh and Jenn and I repeated it for the rest of the evening. The tour continued - we picked a Bung Queen and reenacted our favorite scenes from Laverne & Shirley. Truly Classy.

After the tour we stayed at Lakefront for the fish fry. How could we say no when there was a live polka band. Jenn and I danced to the Pennsylvania Polka, which, I pointed out to our waitress, is the PA State Song, and to Roll Out the Barrel, which is played at Brewers games during the 7th inning stretch - right after the sausage races. Milwaukee is a classy place. We sat with strangers, who were no longer strangers by the time we left. Jenn asked an old man to dance with her during his next available polka. However, that was while they were waiting for the bathrooms, and he never found her later to fulfill his promise.

This was all before 9 o'clock and the rest of the evening wasn't nearly so jam-packed eventful. Some noteable things though:

• Bar 2: Jenn knocked over a guy's beer; I quickly bought him a new one before he punched me.
• Bar 3: Anthropologist-laden.
• Bar 4: The bouncer asked Jenn and me to refrain from tap dancing on the dance floor. I suppose he doesn't appreciate Wings or the Shuffle off to Buffalo.
• <>Bar 5: More of a club - we tried doing the polka, but had to stop when we began to knock drinks out of other people's hands.
  

<><>Milwaukee is a classy place.