The Crown Plaza

This morning we were up early, ate the continental breakfast which was actually pretty nice. There were bagels, yogurt, cereals both hot and cold, many different kinds of juice,danishes, hard boiled eggs, and of course coffee. After breakfast we took off on our bike ride. The town is old, not a tourist trap but many unique buildings to see. Unfortunately the town is NOT flat, but we made due. We had to get off our bikes a couple of times to walk up some pretty good hills but going down was like flying. We made it back to the riverbank lodge about 8:30am, did price line for Springfield, got the Crown Plaza for $45.00 a night packed up and left for the Lincoln Museum. We arrived at the museum around 9:30am and enjoyed it until around 11:30am when we decided to go for a walk outside to warm up and get some lunch. We found a farmers market and right across the street the Cafe Moxo (I'll check the spelling on that later)The food was delicious and unusual. Mark got the french onion soup with a half of tuna sandwich with walnuts and grapes, it also came with a drink so he chose V8. I chose the egg casserole, biscuit with black raspberry jam and coffee. I don't usually like egg casseroles but this one was fantastic, moist and the flavor was magnificent, slightly salty with some other very good spices. After giving Mark one bite I finished the rest and we took off to explore the market. We bought a small individual home made cherry pie to share for dessert and some kettle corn for the hotel later then back to the museum to finish what we couldn't get to earlier. We were ready to leave the museum around 1:30pm, drove to the Plaza, checked in and what a delight. We have a very elegant room on the 4th floor with a king sized bed, big bathroom, a huge entertainment center, 2 closets and pillows that are wonderful. Last nights pillows were the worst, flat and hard, they were worse than hospital pillows. The 14th floor (top) has an indoor pool but a nice outdoor sunning area with lounge chairs. Mark and I spent a couple hours lazing around in the sun reading books. At least I was in the sun, Mark in the shade. The view from the roof is fantastic, 14 floors up, to the right we see lakes and to the left is the city of Springfield. We stayed on the roof until it started getting crowded about 5:00pm. We decided not to eat dinner, our lunch was enough, but will plan on eating the breakfast buffet here at the hotel in the morning. We stayed at a Crown Plaza in Chicago and their breakfast buffet is expensive but wonderful. Depending on what time we get up, we may even make it back in time for church tomorrow. This has been a wonderful gift from my husband and I'm thoroughly enjoying it!