Index
Days 1/2: Short North
Day 3: PEARC25
Day 4: PEARC25
Days 5/6: Columbus
Day 7: CMH-CLE
Day 8: Cleveland
Ohio
Late night arrival in Columbus, Ohio for PEARC25. The Joseph (Le Meridien) was very nice when Erik and I stayed there a few years ago, so decided to splurge and stay there again this trip. Downtown Columbus is so small, most hotels are barely a five minute walk, and The Joseph's location in Short North is a bit more convenient to the hipster food scene.
ACM's Practical and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC25) conference series is on the smaller size of conferences at under 1,000 people, which means they barely filed two sets of rooms and one exhibit hall even in Columbus' convention center. First day was workshops and tutorials that were pretty good at least, which is always a good start.
Went a few blocks south, further into downtown, to get lunch. Pork katsu at Osaka Ton Katsu was pretty good, with a very rich and flavorful pork soup to go with it. Loaded salad with beef added for dinner at Townhall-- very fashionable place with an equally fashionable (and thankfully quite tasty) salad, however also very sunny, and a front of house staff that was clearly very young and not as conscientious as they could have been. Which was sort of the opposite of Goodfella's Pizzeria, where they had a very good staff but decidedly mediocre food.
Wrapped up the first full day in Ohio with a more proper browsing of the hotel. As part of Marriott's middle-higher-end Le Meridien brand, The Joseph exceeds itself with a surprisingly good-sized art gallery on the second floor lobby. Exhibited art had a strong focus both on Columbus local artists as well an equally strong focus on Cuban artists. Surprisingly good, made me wish that I had checked it out on my previous visit.