Go Illini and The Best Pizza

We had an enjoyable weekend as we headed down to Champaign/Urbana to our Alma Mater, the University of Illinois.  I hadn't visited for almost 30 years and Jo hasn't been there for about 5 years.  Needless to say, there were lots of changes from when we went to school there.  What astounded both of us was the number of new buildings and missing old buildings in Campus town.  You kind of assume that the buildings would stay put even if the businesses in them change.  The downtown theater is gone (now where do college kids go to see Rocky Horror Picture show at midnight?) and the McDonalds that helped put Jo through college is gone - who tears down a McDonalds right next to campus?  Along with the changes was the pizza place that we were planning for dinner when we got into town on Friday night, Garcia's Pizza in a Pan.  Fortunately, they are still in business but the only location, according to the net, is on the far side of Champaign.  We settled for two Zorba's gyros which has gone significantly upscale since we were last eating there.

After dinner we walked around the quad reliving memories of our various classes in the buildings.  We also walked through the Illini Union (best union in the Big Ten in our unbiased opinion - it definitely beats our other Alma Mater's union, Memorial Union in Madison) and went by the place where we first met each other.  The cafeteria in the basement of the Union.  The cafeteria is completely changed but we figured out the approximate place where Jo was sitting when I met her.  We then headed to the south part of campus to see the dorm I stayed in for 2 years and walked through a little bit of Urbana before heading back to the hotel to rest up for our big day on Saturday.

Saturday we got up and ran through campus trying to find the apartment I lived in my senior year.  Unfortunately, we turned right when we should have turned left and missed it, but we did have a great run down the east side of the campus.  Then after checking out, we headed back to campus to see all the buildings in the light of day.  We were able to get into the various chemistry buildings where we both spent a lot of time and saw old classrooms and the lab where I did my undergraduate research.  One nice surprise was finding that our names are displayed in the hallway along with all the other graduates from 1872-2002 (that is Jo pointing to her name).  Next up was a quick visit to Lincoln Hall which has just reopened after a major renovation.  From what we can tell Illinois is renovating most of the buildings around the quad as the chemistry building was all torn up along with the main library and Gregory Hall.

We then headed over to the southwest side of campus to see the Armory where Jo and I both remember walking around trying to register for classes and the challenge of figuring out what order to do them in to maximize the chances of getting your ideal schedule and minimize the number of times you had to go back and make a change.  Oh the fun and stress of class registration before computers - where is the fun of doing it all online with instant feedback, plus where is all the stress.  We next visited Jo's old dorm and then it was time to see the Illini play Indiana.  Unfortunately, not a great day for our football teams as Illinois lost to Indiana and Wisconsin also landed losing back in Madison.  But we enjoyed being in the stadium, the hot chocolate on a cold day, and singing the old fight songs (well Jo did anyway, I didn't remember all the words). 

After the game we headed into campus town to buy some Illinois sweatshirts, try to find the house Jo lived in her senior year, and hit the last highlight of the trip - Papa Del's.  Unfortunately time has not been good to Jo's junior and senior year houses.  Both have been torn down since she left.  One the university built over and the other has become a large apartment complex (all of the places I lived in at Illinois are still standing, I'm not implying anything there, but obviously someone thought they were important enough to keep as compared to where Jo lived).  Then it was finally time for us to tuck into the best pizza we have ever found, Papa Del's.  This was one of the big highlights of the trip for us and we were not disappointed.  It is still a great mix of extra thick, sweet crust, tasty sauce and enough cheese to make a Wisconsite proud.  YUM. 

As this is such a great pizza we came prepared to take several of them home with us - which meant we had saran wrap, aluminum foil, plastic bags, and a cooler with ice in the trunk of our car.  We bought 3 extra large pizzas to take with us and took the remains of our dinner along (which was another extra large pizza).  So all told we had 44 pieces of pizza to wrap up and bring home.  We did the wrapping in a parking lot on the hood of our car, but since we now have a freezer full of Papa Del's pizza for the next several months to enjoy it was so worth it.  We did get a fair number of interesting comments from passersby while we were wrapping.  After our pizza wrapping we jumped in the car for the four hour drive home.

Sunday was pretty relaxing by comparison.  After doing some exercising in the morning we caught up with our backlog of newspapers, had pizza for lunch (yep, Papa Del's) and watched the Packers play.  We made broccoli and potato soup with homemade french bread for dinner and then spent the evening watching a few of our taped shows before calling it a night.  We both went to bed with visions of great pizza in our dreams.