First Impressions of Champaign
The end of my third full day in Champaign and I've finally gotten all of my walking/biking/bus riding around town done and my apartment resembling a livable place. The final touch was a new CAT6 cable since the cable left by the previous tenant was a piece of junk that would drop packets like crazy if bent the wrong direction. Fun stuff.
Urbana-Champaign, UC, Chambana or whatever you want to call it is a nice place. The weather is perfect spring weather... high of 70, sunny, breezy, and a little humid. Looking at my Google home page and seeing 90 in College Station really makes me feel sorry for the family suffering through another long BCS summer.
I've found my office, the Y, Best Buy, Borders, two Wal-marts and a grocery store now so my routes around town are set. I think I've also found the quieter streets to bike down, but we'll see how it all works out in rush hour tomorrow morning.
The UIUC campus is gorgeous. The consistent red-brick facades make the campus feel very homey and unified. Not like A&M where very few of the buildings look similar. I have seen the UIUC football stadium. In one word it is "quaint". I wanted to go up to it and pick it up, pat it on the head and tell it, "Don't worry. You'll grow up to be a big football stadium some day. Even if you don't you're still really cute." I think I've also seen the basketball arena... only slightly smaller than the football stadium. :) Seriously, it looks smaller than Reed Arena, but that is because it is a dome and I think quite a bit of it is below the surface.
One final note about campus for now. The squirrels are domesticated to a point that makes the A&M squirrels look like spooked gazzels on the Serengeti. I was waiting for a bus when a squirrel jumped up on the bench and gave me the sad squirrel eyes bit. When that didn't work he walked up and put his front paws on my bag and tried to look more worthy of a snack. At that point I decided to let him have the bench before he decided to switch tactics and beat me up for my lunch money.
Urbana-Champaign, UC, Chambana or whatever you want to call it is a nice place. The weather is perfect spring weather... high of 70, sunny, breezy, and a little humid. Looking at my Google home page and seeing 90 in College Station really makes me feel sorry for the family suffering through another long BCS summer.
I've found my office, the Y, Best Buy, Borders, two Wal-marts and a grocery store now so my routes around town are set. I think I've also found the quieter streets to bike down, but we'll see how it all works out in rush hour tomorrow morning.
The UIUC campus is gorgeous. The consistent red-brick facades make the campus feel very homey and unified. Not like A&M where very few of the buildings look similar. I have seen the UIUC football stadium. In one word it is "quaint". I wanted to go up to it and pick it up, pat it on the head and tell it, "Don't worry. You'll grow up to be a big football stadium some day. Even if you don't you're still really cute." I think I've also seen the basketball arena... only slightly smaller than the football stadium. :) Seriously, it looks smaller than Reed Arena, but that is because it is a dome and I think quite a bit of it is below the surface.
One final note about campus for now. The squirrels are domesticated to a point that makes the A&M squirrels look like spooked gazzels on the Serengeti. I was waiting for a bus when a squirrel jumped up on the bench and gave me the sad squirrel eyes bit. When that didn't work he walked up and put his front paws on my bag and tried to look more worthy of a snack. At that point I decided to let him have the bench before he decided to switch tactics and beat me up for my lunch money.
posted by Timmie Smith at 5:13 PM
2 Comments:
Have you made it to The Blind Pig Co. for a beer? I just read the list of top 50 places in America to get a beer and it was ranked 26.
Thanks for the tip, Wes. I haven't been out to any of the bars in town yet, but I'll make sure to make The Blind Pig Co. one of my first stops. Based on the reviews in your first link I may not leave the place
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