A most liveable place!

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.
          ~Margaret Mead

     The Kiplinger Report released its list of the Top 10 Best cities in the US to live this week. I read the list with some interest, as I have been giving a lot of thought to what makes a place liveable. Here are the criteria used by the Kiplinger Report in their rankings:

Our approach this year to picking the ten best cities in which to live and work was simple: Look for places with strong economies and abundant jobs, then demand reasonable living costs and plenty of fun things to do.

          ~Kiplinger Report, June 27, 2012

If you have more interest in this report, here is the website:  http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2008/07/2008-best-cities-to-live-work-play.html

We recently visited Madison, Wisconsin where every Saturday there is a huge Farmers' Market on the square surrounding the State Capital Building.

     Lanny and I recently returned from a short trip to Wisconsin, where we had the pleasure of visiting the downtown area of Madison on a Saturday morning. Madison is unique in that it is the state capital, is home to a Big 10 university (University of Wisconsin) and is known as an art colony of sorts. I read up on it online before we got there and discovered they had a large farmer's market on the Capital Square every Saturday morning so we decided to get up and go see it. We were very impressed by both the size and scope of what was offered at this open air market. Produce piled high, Wisconsin cheese, flowers, bakeries, a few flea market offerings, even yarns and soaps were offered in abundance. Literally thousands of people, with lots and lots of small children and strollers, walked the square around the large and imposing state capital building, and shopped. The produce was beautiful and most of it was advertized as organic.

     Additionally, there were many people out who were street performers or had a political agenda they wanted to present to the throngs. We listened to a guy beat bongo drums and recite spur-of-the-moment poetry (something about popcorn and arguing with his wife... we got a kick out if it!), saw a local politician out shaking hands, watched other street performers and admired the produce.

Loved this guy-- an old hippie still carrying the anti-war protest signs. Ah... for the good old days!

Right in front of the capital building there is a "community garden" growing. Tables set up in the background are for various causes-- sign up here for a petition about this or that...

A street performer draws a crowd

     We even bought our breakfast at a bakery booth-- fabulous cinnamon buns and a cup of coffee.

This was breakfast-- the cinnamon roll was ginormous - at least 5 inches square!

Lanny enjoyed his!

     Then, we left the square and wandered along a street filled with art galleries and even bought a piece of art glass to take home.  We stopped and sampled some Italian gelato before heading back to our hotel, passing many more boutiques and galleries. We passed many lovely and modern apartments and condos along the way, and found ourselves wondering what it would be like to live in one. We noted a lot of bicyclists and bike paths along every street. We also saw a lot of city buses out helping move people from one place to another.

     The trip back to our hotel took us past one of the lakes that Madison is situated between and we saw people out jogging the paths along the lake as well as many boaters out enjoying the lake itself. Even on a hot, overcast day the setting was beautiful! 

     It struck us that Madison was doing a lot of things right and it seemed like a great place to live. At least in the summer, it looked like it was easy to get around, there were lots of fun things to do, and living there was fun.  As we often find we do when we travel, we talked about and briefly considered the possibility of living there... While we love our home in Indiana, a lot of what Madison offers is missing here. We do not have a good public transit system and we don't have safe roads for bicyclists. Paths have been installed downtown, but it amounted to a simple repainting the lines on the street. They seem to me to be way too narrow to be safe for cyclists! 

     On the other hand, the trend toward locally produced food has started here, and we have enjoyed attending the farmers' markets in our area. Our area does enjoy a very low cost of living, and the job market is picking up, albeit slowly. And fun things do occur, more than we can actually take in. We love our home out in the country too. And it is close to family and friends...

   So, as we always end up doing after we travel, we decide we'll stay here in Indiana and continue to travel and see the rest of the world. Coming home can be the best part of any trip!