Explore Columbus with Dayna:
Dayna and I chose The Roosevelt Coffeehouse for our Explore Columbus assignment. We visited this coffeeshop on November 2nd, 2020. I made sure to choose this date because I knew how difficult waiting until the end of the semester could be, as well as how unpredictable it may be with Covid. We chose this place because it is my favorite coffeeshop in Columbus and Dayna was very excited to check it out. We went on this Explore Columbus trip with another mentee/mentor pair, Ryleigh and Eliza! Ryleigh and I picked Eliza and Dayna up from Smith-Steeb in the morning and we drove downtown to the Roosevelt coffeehouse. There are two locations of this coffee house downtown and while we thought we were going to the location we had been to before, we ended up at the one we had not seen before. This was exciting, because we all got to check this place our for the first time together! It was in a beautiful area, despite all of the construction going on around the building. This coffee shop was so nice and took Covid precautions very seriously. While we were sitting in there, we noticed that once a person got up, an employee immediately jumped to disinfect their table. They also validated parking in a garage, which was very nice since it was downtown and parking is sometimes unpredictable!. Getting to this location was fairly difficult, because they were re-doing the road that it was located on. Nevertheless, we made it to the coffee shop. We were greeted by a friendly employee and all of us took a moment to try to decide what we wanted to try. Dayna got an iced coffee with Almondmilk and a bagel and I got an iced latte with almond milk and homemade pumpkin sauce. We both enjoyed our drinks very much! We hung out at a table and talked individually and as a group for quite some time. We talked about how our years have been going, and Ryeligh and I shared some of our pre-Covid and post-Covid college experiences! We stayed at the coffee shop for about two hours chatting. When we got up to leave, we realized that Ryleigh had accidentally crumpled our parking ticket that we needed to get validated and put it inside her empty iced mocha cup. This was very funny, because we needed that ticket to exit the parking garage. Ryleigh had to go into the bathroom and use the blow dryer to try to dry the ticket. It was a beautiful day and we walked back to the car. We were all very thankful when the ticket was scanned and we were free to leave, because we were nervous it would not work. We then headed back to Smith-Steeb to drop Eliza and Dayna back off to start their day of classes! We would definitely go back and recommend it to a friend! We agreed that the atmosphere was great, the coffee was great, and the tables were very spaced out! We would recommend it to a friend because it is the great atmosphere to chat with friends, but it is also a good space to get some homework done! The only thing that I would not recommend about this coffee shop is that it is a little difficult for first-years to get to, since it is downtown. However, if you have a car it is the perfect place to go since they validate parking for up to 3 hours!
From this experience, I learned that driving in downtown Columbus is somewhat difficult, and there is a lot of construction in the city. It was fun exploring a new city, especially fun for Ryleigh and I since we finally have our cars this year. I’m glad that we were able to take our mentees off campus and downtown for a change of scenery, especially in a time where there are very limited places open for inside seating. I would recommend that someone completes this same experience but makes sure to keep their parking ticket on hand. The Roosevelt coffee house is definitely a place to check out in the city!