Something they don’t tell you in the long-distance relationship manual is that it never really gets easier to live most of your lives separately. My fiancé and I have been long distance since July 2017, and it’s tough to miss all those little moments of mundane, daily life together. The past few months have been particularly hard, with planning the wedding alone, being on opposite schedules thanks to my classes and his rotations, and missing important events and holidays. All that to say, I didn’t think I could last the whole two and a half months between my birthday and Christmas break to see him, and he had a (rare) free weekend, so we decided to take a spontaneous trip to Madison, Wisconsin.

Madison, Wisconsin is the capital of the state and home to University of Wisconsin-Madison. It has a metro-area population of 654,230, making it much smaller than a city like Milwaukee, but with the college and a pretty active food and arts scene, it still has plenty to do. We opted to stay in Sun Prairie, one of the suburbs of Madison, because the hotel was much cheaper and the drive in to the city was still relatively short.

We arrived to Sun Prairie late Friday afternoon to check into the hotel, then opted to do what Ryan was arguably most excited to do this entire trip: go to the grocery store. Woodman’s Markets is a Wisconsin-based grocery store chain (though it has expanded to locations in Illinois now, as well) that is 100-percent employee-owned. I didn’t understand the hype—it’s just a grocery store, right?

You walk in and it feels like the chaos of an Aldi’s, but on a super-sized scale, like the Forever21 of warehouse grocery stores. The first thing on our list was to buy a Kringle, Wisconsin’s official state pastry (which I did not know was a thing states had). The Kringle was originally brought to Racine, WI in the 1800s by Danish immigrants. Almond is the traditional filling, but Ryan and I grabbed a strawberry-filled oval pastry from the shelf and kept on moving.

Once we ventured deeper into the store, I started to notice the prices. Like the 16 oz. of cherry tomatoes that were 57 cents. I blinked. Eight oz. or (even less) runs me $4 on my normal grocery run. I grabbed the tomatoes, thinking it was a special sale. I told Ryan we should grocery shop for real on our last day there, hoping to find some more deals. (And yes, we did actually spend our last day of this trip going grocery shopping, but I guess that’s what it means to be an adult.)

It turns out that Woodman’s has a bulk purchasing model and they don’t accept credit cards (aside from Discover) to save money on processing fees, which means their prices are often significantly lower than large grocery store chains. Every single item I bought, I would pick up and exclaim, “This would’ve been [insert ridiculously high price] in Mankato!” Triple the amount of quinoa for the same price, people! Can I drive over the state border to do my grocery shopping?

Our last stop at Woodman’s was the liquor section because Ryan wanted to see if their bourbon was also cheaper, or if they carried some bourbon that would normally be sold-out in Kentucky because of its popularity. So there we were in the bourbon aisle when a guy walked up to us and said in the most Wisconsin accent ever, “Kringle, tomatoes, and booze. Sounds like a party!”

And that was our introduction to Madison, Wisconsin.

Lake Monona

The city itself sits on the isthmus and surrounds two lakes: Mendota and Monona. Our first stop Saturday morning was Olbrich Park, which runs along the shore of Lake Monona. It hasn’t been consistently cold enough up north for a lake of this size to freeze over (it was in the 30’s and 40’s on our trip), but there were some really cool ice formations on the trees and rocks where the water lapped up on shore and froze. I also enjoyed the view of the high rises of the city from across the lake—it reminded me a lot of the Cities here in Minnesota.

Bolz Conservatory

A short drive up the road in Olbrich Park was the Olbrich Botanical Gardens and Bolz Conservatory. We didn’t get a chance to go through the 16-acre outdoor botanical garden, but I would love to go back and check it out (maybe during the spring or summer next time).

Bolz Conservatory was a lot like Como Park Conservatory in the Cities (check out my blog post about Como), a little tropical haven in the middle of the frigid midwest. The glass pyramid is 50-feet high and houses a diverse collection of tropical plants, a waterfall, free-flying birds, and blooming orchids. There are more than 650 plants representing more than 80 families and more than 475 different species and cultivars from around the world. The temperature inside the the conservatory ranges from 65 to 80 degrees year-round, and it was hot enough when we were there to fog up my camera lens.

Wisconsin State Capitol

After the conservatory, we headed downtown to eat lunch at Graze (which was a little pricey, but very good). When faced with a 45-minute wait time (something we ran into at almost every restaurant we went to, though I didn’t mind because it was a reminder I wasn’t in the middle-of-nowhere Mankato), we decided to hop across the street to check out the Wisconsin Sate Capitol building.

The first capitol building was built in 1837 for $60,000, but a fire in 1904 destroyed much of the interior. The new capitol building was built in 1917, this time for a cost of $7.2 million. Over the years, conservation and renovation projects for the impressive rotunda and murals have been completed, and in 2001, the Wisconsin State Capitol was designated a National Historic Landmark.

One thing we noticed while there was that there was no security—no guards, no metal detectors, nothing. Ryan had just visited the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, which has security you need to pass through, so it felt a little strange to just waltz right in and explore. Is Kentucky just overly cautious, or did we miss something?

Henry Vilas Zoo

Our final touristy stop of the trip was the Henry Vilas Zoo, which (like Como Park Zoo in St. Paul) has free admission. The zoo is named in memory of the son of William F. and Anna M. Vilas, who donated a 63-acre tract of land for Vilas Park in 1904, with the stipulation that no admission be charged. The zoo officially opened in 1911, featuring nine deer, one American eagle, two guinea pigs, two rabbits, four white rats, one raccoon, one squirrel, three woodchucks, one red fox, and three groundhogs.

Now, the zoo features animals from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America in exhibits such as a herpetarium, a tropical rainforest aviary, a children’s zoo, and a primate house.

In the herpetarium, we saw two Aldabra tortoises, the second largest tortoise species in the world. They live 65-90 years, are 3-5 feet long, and weigh between 350-550 pounds. I’d never seen this species, so I was especially excited.

At the penguin exhibit, we got a little peek at the African penguins (an endangered species) that are native to 24 rocky islands along the southwestern coast of Africa. We thought they were inside when we approached the exhibit (many, or maybe most of, the animals at the zoo have the option to move freely off-exhibit to keep their stress levels low), but one popped its head out, followed by a couple more. One of them kept teasing us by acting like it was going to jump in the water, but it pulled back every time.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a great zoo experience without an otter sighting! This zoo had a North American River Otter, which, just as we were leaving, decided to make an appearance and pose for me for a second.

To close out our only full day together, we decided to stop the sightseeing and go to a movie (if you haven’t seen Jojo Rabbit, I recommend it—but be prepared to laugh and cry in quick succession). Afterwards, we tried out Bartaco in Hilldale for dinner. They serve street-style tacos, which were really good (I had the portobello and carne asada), though my favorite item was the street-corn fritters (even thinking about them now has got me hungry). Of course, the next morning, we made our grocery shopping trip to Woodman’s, then we finished off the weekend with one last order of cheese curds and burgers at Monk’s.

All in all, Madison was very good to us, and I look forward to making my way back at some point in the future! (& a special thanks to my forever travel-partner for exploring new cities with me.)