Our Trip To Galena, Illinois

We spent Labor Day weekend in the lovely historical town of Galena, Illinois. It's located in the Northwest corner of Illinois just east of the Mississippi river and only about 15 miles from Iowa.

Galena, Illinois was home to President U.S. Grant. His home still stands there today and is one of the attractions that we visited. Here's another rare photo of me, taken outside of Grants home:



And here's a photo of my husband Scott also taken in front of Grant's home:



And another of Scott taken on the grounds:



You can see the beautiful town of Galena to the left.

Grant's home is located just west of the beautiful hotel we stayed at, The Irish Cottage:



Here are several photos of Main Street. Every one of these beautiful old buildings is a gift or speciality shop:



In the next photo, if you look to the left behind the lamplight, you can see the sign for a wonderful needlework shop:



In this photo, if you look to the right you'll see the DeSoto Hotel where Abraham Lincoln had stayed once. He gave a speech from the balcony.



Also in Galena, there's a bead store, a yarn store and a fabric store. Those are only a few of the specialty shops! We probably walked Main Street about 50 times! It's just so beautiful!

Just to the East of Main Street runs the Galena River. The river has flooded downtown Galena many times over the years so at the entrance of Main Street are floodgates to hold the water back. I wish we had taken a photo of them. They were facinating.

This is another photo of me taken by the fountain in Grant's Park which is right on the Galena River:



And one of my husband:



Wish I had taken a photo of him without his sunglasses on. But they're prescription and he can't see a thing without them. He left is regular glasses in the car.

Anyway, it was a lovely trip and terribly difficult to leave. We'd still be walking up and down Main Street if we could!

Tomorrow, I'll share some photos of "a wee bit o' me plunder"!