Hey, what do you know! I made it to another festival that I had on my list! Unfortunately, I’m going to miss GermanFest this weekend… but oh well, let’s focus on what I did get to do.

The ginormous picture you see above is the Pinocchio sand sculpture they had more or less right at the entrance of Henry Meier. At least, at the entrance that we used (since there are three different ones). Yes, it’s made out of sand. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I guess it was being constructed as the festival was happening, but we went on the very last day so it was already done when we got there. Shame.

I had my first cannoli, which was awesome. They had regular cannolis and chocolate cannolis, and I bought a chocolate one thinking the cream filing would be chocolate… but no. The entire cannoli was dipped in chocolate. Holy crap! It was delicious, though.

I wish I could say the same for these things the festival was advertising as “funnolis” all over the place. I saw the price, $1.50, and immediately suspected something was wrong with them. Come on, festival food that only costs a buck and a half? They’re either disgusting or poison, one or the other. There is no in between. Luckily for me, it was the former.

It was nothing like a cannoli. It was basically a puff pastry with white icing on top, and red/green jimmies sprinkled on to make it look like the Italian flag. The filling was supposedly strawberry, but it basically tasted like chalky paste. It was pretty much the worst thing I’ve tasted in a very, very long time, which is disappointing because it was the last thing I ate on the way out. Seriously? I go to an Italian festival with awesome food all around, and I had to pick the most disgusting thing there as my last taste of the festival? Ugh.

And… we honestly didn’t do much more there! We tend not to do much when we go to these festivals, all of the various events and attractions in the park cost more money than we have to spend, so we stuck with food. Beyond the cannoli and funnoli, I had a pepperoni calzone. I fuckin’ love me some calzones. Nicole had a Sicilian Steak sandwich, whatever that is, and some weird peach wine drink. I just had a Mountain Dew. Sorry, I’m not down with paying $7 for festival booze. $2.50 for festival soda is already absurd. $7.00 for one drink is out of the question.

Afterwards, we did some driving around. My step-dad showed Nicole around downtown Milwaukee and portions of the east side. She was excited about it right up until we went to the lakeside Alterra Coffee. After we had our coffees/shakes, I think she shifted into “I’m tired and do not give one single shit” mode until we got home.

By the way, you guys from out of town, if you ever visit Milwaukee you absolutely need to swing by Alterra Lakefront. It’s kind of a hipster coffee shop, but it’s built into an old, old building that was original a river purification plant from the very early 1900s. Most of the machinery that was used then is still there and you can look at it, read about it, and sit right next to it if you want to. Very cool place. You can check out some pictures of it (not mine) right here.