Super Bowl Village

UPDATE:  Kevin was offered the job!  He interviewed this morning and got a phone call this afternoon.  He heads to Atlanta shortly for several weeks of training.  Congratulations, Yardmaster!

Kevin has an all-day job interview today (Thursday) for a new position at CSX so he took Wednesday night off in order to be rested.  Our church group was also cancelled on Wednesday night, so we decided we would head down to the Super Bowl Village in Indy and brave the crowds.  We wanted to be part of this celebration in some way since it was so close to home.

The town and buildings downtown are all decked out. 

Our parking garage was overlooking the Village, so we got some good pictures of the happenings while it was still daylight.

We walked over to Monument Circle to see the huge XLVI numbers.  During the day it looked just like big pillows...and was fairly impressive.

Down the main Village street were more cool signs.  It was just at 6pm when we passed this sign which was hung near the Channel 8 studio.  We got close to the window and waved with the crowd as the news cast went on.  I don't think you could actually see the crowd very well behind the anchor, but we made an attempt to be on local news.

The weather has been uncommonly warm this week, so some of the ice features have not been maintained, but we did come upon the Food Network ice guys still working to maintain their creations.

The special Indy race cars decked out in team gear were impressive.

We also watched many people go down the infamous zip line. 

We had dinner at Sushi On the Rocks just a block off the main drag.  It was good, but we both were wanting GREAT sushi and were fairly disappointed not to have that experience.  Plus it was fairly expensive and we are kicking ourselves for not trying something else (even one of the big steak houses would have been comparable pricing - if we could get a table).  We got a flaming roll which was one of the better options, but still just okay.  We had post-decisional regret on this restaurant choice all evening!

Especially when we went into "The Huddle" - an old department store in Circle Center Mall that had the downstairs converted to a restaurant of sorts.  It had some really good food offerings - everything from gourmet mac & cheese to foot-long brats to an extravagant dessert table - at good prices and more part of the "Super Bowl Experience".  Upstairs was the main Super Bowl gift store with lots of hats, shirts, mugs, etc.  We wish we had discovered this place before we had the sushi we selected. 

We walked the Village a little more than headed back to the circle to see the big numbers at night.  The crowds were much harder to negotiate now, but I was so glad to see how things had been transformed.

A few more pictures from our garage as we left.  Lucas Oil Stadium is so impressive.

But probably our favorite signage of the evening was on the JW Marriott as we drove out of downtown.  Hard to believe this effect was created with a sign on the side of a very tall hotel.  Stunning!