Soldiers and Sailors Memorial

Our Sunday morning in Indianapolis was dazzlingly bright and sunny and a pleasant change after Saturday’s dreary all day rain. We revisited the Wholesale District, now that we could see it in a new light. The bars were all closed, but there were still a surprising number of people around town. There is a dual path trail (wheels and heels) that winds through downtown called the Culture Trail and there is a system of automated bicycle rental kiosks along it. Indianapolis is very flat, making it an easy cycling town. We talked about getting bikes, to get around faster and hopefully see more, but decided that there were too many people even on a Sunday morning to make such a feat very relaxing, enjoyable and safe, so we stuck with walking. One of the sights that we revisited was the pictured Soldiers and Sailors Memorial. You can go up in this spindly white observation tower and see the lay of the land from above. It is free, if you take the stairs, all 330 of them or you can take the elevator for $2. We both started up the stairs. There are 32 flights of stairs and we were soon stopping and resting after each one. The stairway was tight to begin with and as we ascended it only became more so, becoming almost claustrophobic near the top where it changed into a spiral staircase. We made it, but were sweating profusely. It would have been nice is some of the windows were open, because it was a bit stuffy at the top. We looked around and took some pictures and caught our breath. I’m sure that the view was nicer back in the day, before the modern skyscrapers had intervened. We soon started back down again, with Anne in the lead. Forty steps down, the elevator door opened in front of me and some people got out. I waited for them to pass and by this time Anne was several flights ahead of me. I popped into the now empty elevator and passed her on my way down. She was not particularly pleased with me about this and proceeded to lord her additional 290 steps over me for the rest of the day. Still, I got a free ride.