Anna's Blog

Just the other day I was walking down State Street on my way to a meeting at the Overture Center and I thought about how much downtown Madison has changed since I moved here in 1991.

I arrived in my parents’ Volvo with all of my worldly possessions in the trunk and moved into a sublet apartment on East Johnson, just off of State Street. I was preparing for my junior year at UW as a music major and planned to spend the summer practicing my violin and hanging out downtown.

To this day, I love downtown in the summertime – not as many students and the lakes are glorious! The Union is still one of the jewels of Madison – right on Lake Mendota with sailboats galore and great live music, not to mention the brats and microbrews.

Head down State Street and you will see local coffee shops, great shopping, fantastic restaurants and a world class arts facility – Overture Center. If you haven’t been to a show there or stepped in to see the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, you must. Every Saturday we have one of the best farmer’s markets in the country. Then there’s the summer fairs that happen almost on a weekly basis: Art Fair on the Square, Maxwell Street Days, Taste of Madison…