Lazlo's in Lincoln

This weekend I loaded up the family and drove up to Nebraska, my wife, Stella Artois, is from Lincoln. We often go up to Omaha and swing by Lincoln to visit family. Lincoln is good for 5 things; football, shrimp pizza, Colby Ridge popcorn, a prison right in the middle of town and Lazlo's microbrewery (now in Omaha too, but so far west it's basically in Lincoln).
While we were at Stella's grandmas, some of Stella's cousins came by to visit as well (they were in from Southern California, you get where this is going?). They mentioned that they had extra tickets for what I was calling the game of the year, but most people were just calling USC-Nebraska. I'd hate to lose guy cred but we were staying in Omaha and it's a real pain to get from Omaha to Lincoln on gameday, not to mention we still had to get to Omaha and after the drive up from KC, I didn't feel I had it in me to do the driving necessary to get to the game

I know, I know, you wish this was interesting; I do too, it's just not working out that way. Oh well, we'll press on.
While in Omaha we hit the extra vowel stores (Von Maur and Younkers, they give you that extra 'u' so they can charge extra coin) that Stella loves, hit the indoor pool with the kids and went to eat local Mexican fast food at a Nebraska chain called Amigos. In order to get the girls out of the pool the first time we had to tell them we would come back later, so we hit the pool again and now to the point of the story, I got to sit down and watch the game of the year and enjoy some Colby Ridge popcorn (hard to get on gameday) and some Empyrean Burning Skye Scottish Ale.

Empyrean Third Stone Brown is really a pretty good beer, it could have a little more flavor, but then again so could my balls. My point is, go to Nebraska have some Third Stone Brown. Stella really enjoys Burning Skye Scottish Ale so it always makes the trip back to KC. And I must say it's a really good beer, perhaps the finest Scottish Ale I've had. 75th Street Brewery has had a Scottish as a seasonal for the last couple of months and I do like it better than Empyrean's but it's close enough that I wouldn't argue with someone who likes Empyrean's more, plus it's available in bottles all year round.
I don't really recommend the Spaghetti Works, but it's a fine place if you have kids that like pasta. I do highly recommend the Upstream Brewing Company which is right next door to the Spaghetti Works in Old Market. They always have a cask beer or two and make a fine porter which was fabulous the last time we were there. It was approximately -2 degrees that day and they had a vanilla porter as a cask beer, I don't believe I've run into a more perfect beer for that particular moment. We had been putting shrimp pizza into Ziplocs to put in the cooler for the trip back to KC. For some reason I turned the car off to do this so I was digging in ice in the freezing cold in the Upstream parking lot right before we went in for a beer. Cellar temperature Porter was perfect for that occasion.

I know, I know, I threw a lot at you in this post and it was all dreadfully boring so let's hit the highlights and shopping items for your time in Southeastern Nebraska; Lazlo's/Empyrean, Colby Ridge popcorn (score some at Hy-vee in Lincoln), Upstream brewery, shrimp pizza from Valentino's (they're everywhere) and prison.