10 ‘Staycation’ ideas for a Milwaukee Spring Break

Not every UWM student has the time or money to go on an extravagant and Instagram-able vacation for spring break, but that doesn’t mean your time spent in Milwaukee has to be boring. While this winter has been especially cold, leaving everyone daydreaming about warmth and sunshine, there are plenty of pleasant ways to escape the frozen city tundra mindset besides staring off into space.  

1. Starting off with an essential Wisconsin pastime, knock a few pins down at Bayview Bowl, winner of the Journal Sentinel’s 2018 Top Choice Award for Best Bowling Alley in Milwaukee. Located at 2416 S Kinnickinnic Ave., Bayview Bowl has called Milwaukee home for nearly a century now. Offering drinks, food, darts, pool and a variety of arcade games in addition to 12 lanes, Bayview Bowl has enough fun and games to keep you occupied long enough to forget about this bone-chillingly cold winter. Glow bowling is on Friday and Saturday nights, Thursday nights are open bowling and Sundays are $2 shoe rental, and $2 per game. Continuing with the theme of fun and games, Lightspeed Go-Karts and Laser Tag offers indoor go-karting, laser tag, arcade games and even escape rooms. They offer a variety of different tickets and packages allowing you to pick and choose what activities you want to do, as well as find a price that works with your budget. While their location at 4251 S. 27th St. in Greenfield might be a little farther away than anything else on this list, it is the closest indoor go-kart track to Milwaukee. 
2. Once the urge to get out and be active has been fulfilled, take a visit to the ever-beautiful Milwaukee Art Museum, where UWM students get a discount when they present their student ID, bringing admission down to $15. Spring break comes just in time for students to see the new “Sara Cwyner: Image Model Muse” exhibit, which happens to be the first U.S. solo museum exhibition for Cwyner. In addition to the special exhibits, the museum has multiple floors with over 30,000 pieces on display, as well as the attached 341,000 square foot Warm Memorial Museum. The Milwaukee Art Museum became Milwaukee’s first art gallery in 1888, more than 125 years ago. 
3. Museums are a great way to both relax for a day and gain new cultural knowledge, and the Milwaukee Public Museum is no exception. MPM offers a student discounted rate of $14 for general admission, and if 3D movies interest you, students get a discounted ticket rate of $7. The museum houses over 4 million species within 150,000 square feet of permanent exhibit space and currently has an exhibit called Poison, which details the power of poison around the world through various forms. The Milwaukee Public Museum is world famous for its high quality and elaborate dioramas like the Streets of Old Milwaukee, a life-size exhibit that visitors can walk through and see what Milwaukee might have been like a century ago.  
4. Obviously, you’re going to need some tasty food to warm you up and give you some energy to get everything done on this list, so here are a few choice culinary options for various meals.  

• Brunch/Breakfast: Comet Cafe on Farwell Avenue offers a good variety of classic brunch options as well as vegan and vegetarian options served to you at either a booth or the bar. Blue’s Egg on Oakland Avenue in Shorewood serves modern American brunch at fair prices. Engine Company No. 3 in Walker’s Point is slightly more pricey than the latter two options, but the Firehouse-themed ambiance and quality of food easily make up for it.  
• Lunch: Fuel cafe on 5th Street in Walker’s Point is a great place to learn a bit about the motorcycling history of Milwaukee while grabbing a bite to eat and maybe some coffee to perk you up. The Ethiopian Cottage Restaurant on Farwell Avenue has reasonable prices is sure to have something new to try on the menu for everyone. Café Corazón is a cozy restaurant in Riverwest that offers delicious farm-to-table Mexican cuisine.
• Dinner: Thai A. Kitchen on Oakland Avenue serves native Thai cuisine within walking distance of UWM campus. The Safe House downtown is a Milwaukee icon that everyone who lives in Milwaukee for any period of time must visit. Merrriment Social in Walker’s Point serves globally influenced New American comfort food, including some of the most delicious burgers ever to grace dinner plates.  

6. Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum might look like a beautiful private mansion with a breath-breathtakingly elaborate garden from the outside, but it is an art museum open to the public. The Villa is a mediterranean-style country house situated on the bluff between Lake Drive and Lincoln Memorial Drive with a great view of Lake Michigan from the rear patio. Moving Images, a collection of British royal portraiture, is currently on display at the museum.  

7. Float Milwaukee, located at 211 W. Freshwater Way, offers sensory deprivation tanks that give floaters a chance to escape reality and leave all of their worries behind, at least for a little bit. Despite being located on Freshwater Way, the sensory deprivation tanks are filled with salt-water that gives enough buoyancy to allow virtually anyone to float in the 10-inches of water which is heated to the same temperature as skin.  

8. Milwaukee has an abundance of great coffee shops, perhaps even enough to spend an entire day running around sampling from different cafes. Aside from the UWM Grind locations, Collective has numerous locations scattered around the city as well as Stone Creek. The original Fuel Café in Riverwest offers a more coffeeshop-like vibe than their 5th Street location. Kickapoo Coffee in the Historic Third Ward, Anodyne Coffee roasting Co. in Walker’s Point, Alderaan Coffee Roasters inside the Milwaukee Public Market and Cafe Benelux across the street from Alderaan are all great options as well.  

9. Thrift store shopping is a favorite past time of many UWM students and Milwaukee offers a plethora of options scattered around the city. Goodwill, Value Village, and St. Vincent DePaul are the most obvious choices for thrift stores, but there are several other lesser-known options. Retique and East Town Women’s Resale Shop are located just blocks from each other in the Third Ward, and while the Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity ReStore doesn’t offer clothing, they do offer a nice variety of furniture and home decor. Swanky Seconds and ReThreads are both located in Shorewood a short distance from each other. Sole Salvation in Yankee Hill specializes in quality secondhand shoes. 

10. The Harley-Davidson Museum, located downtown at 400 W. Canal St., features a 20-acre campus full of historic motorcycles and other American memorabilia dating back to 1903. Harley-Davidson Motor Company was founded in a shed in Milwaukee near where the current world headquarters stands. There are over 450 motorcycles and artifacts detailing American history and Harley-Davidson history, including the first ever production Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The museum offers tours that take visitors on a journey through the events, people, and culture of Harley-Davidson. There is also a gift shop called The Shop and a restaurant called Motor where guests can take home a piece of Milwaukee history, whether it be in the form of a licensed scale Harley replica or food in their stomachs.