A Day Trip to Indianapolis, IN from Louisville, KY

We conquered the Children’s Museum, the Lego Store and had a dinner all before heading home for the evening.

 photo indy2_zps99c4be85.jpgChildren’s Museum: We left our house right about 11:15 on Sunday morning to head up for the museum, it was a spontaneous decision to go up there so we didn’t leave as early as we probably should have. We got to Indy at about 1 pm. The museum opens at 10 and closes at 5 on Sundays. Parking in the garage or in one of the outside lots is free. When we pulled into the garage it was very full and I got a sinking feeling that this trip was not going to be very much fun. I don’t do very well with large crowds and my boys are pretty small and they tend to get pushed around when there are lots of other people trying to see the same exhibit. I was pleasantly surprised when we walked in and there wasn’t a crowd of people at the ticket line. The price for 2 adults and 2 children was $68.00, the price for a family membership for the year is $155 and you have a two week window to apply the $68.00 to the membership if you chose to convert it. My children (5 and 3 years old) absolutely loved the museum, it was extremely interactive and touching/ playing with the displays was encouraged! There might have been a lot of cars in the garage but we didn’t experience any areas where there were so many people that it was uncomfortable. In fact many times we felt like we had the place to ourselves. There are 4 floors to explore with most of the interactive areas for the younger kiddos on the 3 and 4th floor. There was even a carousel on the 4th floor, tickets were $1 per child and with a membership it was free. We were talking about next time starting at the 4th floor and working our way down the next time because the kids were pretty tired by the time that we got to areas that were the best for them.

 photo indy4_zps79df8118.jpgNext on our agenda was the Lego Store! The Lego Store is located in the Castleton Square Mall, and is about 20 mins from the museum. Now I can’t tell you for sure how long it took because my husband went to high school in Indy so we drove past his old house, high school etc.

 photo indy5_zps7df834ae.jpgThe Lego Store: Is located inside of a pretty big mall in Indy, and was everything my little guys could have dreamed of. The walls were lined with boxes and boxes of Lego sets. They had a station where you can build your own mini figure and the back wall was nothing but Lego bricks sorted out by color. When we checked out they gave us a voucher for a free ticket to Lego Land, the next step is to convince my husband that we need to use them and go to Orlando! I will say this, don’t make a special trip just to go to the Lego store. Bricks and Minifigs in Louisville in my opinion has a better set up than the store that we went to

The last stop of the evening was dinner. There were several places around the mall like On the Border, Bucca de Beppo, Panera etc. However, when we go to different places our mission is to find a local restaurant that is not a chain and kid friendly. Believe it or not that is pretty hard to find in Indy. We ended up at a restaurant 15 mins from the mall on the marina.

The restaurant is Bella Vita, it sits overlooking the water, my boys had a great time looking at the boats coming in and out of the marina. The best part is that it felt like it was on the beach and so I felt like I was on a mini vacation.

 photo indy3_zps324f9ed9.jpgAll and all we had a great time, however I would have left earlier and probably gone home sooner. It is very nice that you can drive 2 hours up the road and feel like you have gotten away from it all, even if it is for just a day.

By guest contributor: Allison

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