Every year for the past several years, the BFF and I have a “Thank goodness cookie season is over” trip. We normally do something within a few hours, so it’s been all Ohio so far. We’ve done areas like Marietta, Columbus, Youngstown, and Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This year we decided to do the Ashtabula/Geneva/Madison area.
In Ashtabula…
- Bridge Street – lots of shops and artsy things
- Maritime Museum – amazing resource for local history, with the largest beach glass, info on a Titanic survivor that came to the area, a railroad disaster, and so much more.
- Chestnut Grove Cemetery and Edgewood Cemetery – lovely areas with gorgeous headstones.
- Walnut Beach – great for beach glass
- Eerie Harbor Ghost Tour – a great walk around Bridge Street and up the hilll towards the Maritime Museum, full of history
- Lakeway Restaurant – a great stop for lunch!
- Ferrante’s – a fancy winery/restaurant. Nice atmosphere.
We stayed in Austinburg, a nice central place to everything we had planned. Austinburg also had a very big Rocking Chair, the Mechanicsville Covered Bridge, and Noema Gems.
In Madison…
- Riverview Park – a great nature area with trails right down to the river. Lots to look at.
- Flashlight Ghost Tour at the Madison Seminary – A huge old building. Many many rooms. A lot of history. They ordered in Pizza you could buy by the slice. They had a tarot card reader you could do a session with. A fun experience.
- Mary’s Diner – a great retro styled diner.
- Dizzy Does – a little farm where you can feed goats
- Joey’s Italian Grill – not bad. It was busy for sure though.
In Geneva-on-the-Lake…
- Breakwater Beach – it was wavy that day and we didn’t have as much time, so I didn’t find much there.
- Allison’s Minature Golf Putt-Putt – oldest mini golf course in continuous use.
- Scribbler’s Coffee – a great little stop for a quick bite.
Northeast Ohio has a lot of great places to visit, many hidden into the nooks and crannies of city versus farm life.