Ahh, Milwaukee: I can’t get back to this magical land of top-notch beer and mouthwatering cheese soon enough. When I visited Milwaukee last October, I felt like I had been let in on some amazing secret (but if you’re a local, you know how awesome it is already). Wondering what to do in Brew City? Here’s how to spend an incredible long weekend in Milwaukee — because with a city as great as this, having two days just won’t cut it.

But First: How Did I Find Myself in Milwaukee for a Long Weekend?

I’d originally heard rumblings about Milwaukee’s fantastic beer scene from Miss Scarlet‘s husband, a Marquette University graduate, back in 2013. But it wasn’t until I attended the Women in Travel Summit in Québec City in 2018 that Milwaukee really started to move up on my travel list.

Several bloggers — including Megan from Why Wait To See The World and Kelly from A Path Less Taken — raved about Milwaukee’s drinks, food, and hospitality. When I expressed interest in visiting during the fall, Kelly graciously offered to host me for most of my visit and play tour guide. Not only was she a total lifesaver (this was supposed to be a group trip but I wound up going solo), but she took me to some incredible Milwaukee breweries, bars, and museums. Read on to discover all the great spots you need to visit on your long weekend in Milwaukee!

How Do You Get To Milwaukee, WI?

Listen up, fellow travelers: getting to Wisconsin to visit Milwaukee isn’t as hard as you think. If the lure of cheese, beer, and friendly faces doesn’t pull you in, know that it’s located:

• 90 minutes north of Chicago, one of my all-time favorite cities;
• Within a day’s drive of one-third of the U.S. population (that’s crazy!); and
• Its airport is only 8 miles from downtown Milwaukee.

So no excuses, people — time to head on over to this great city on a great lake! (When learning about Milwaukee’s nicknames, I found that “A Great City on A Great Lake” is actually listed as one of them — alongside Brew City, Cream City, and City of Festivals. True story.)

Awesome Long Weekend in Milwaukee Map

Need help keeping track of all the Milwaukee hot spots you want to visit? Check out our handy dandy map below to see all of the places referenced in this post!

↓ Hint: Click on the square with an arrow to see the key and layers. You’ll find where to stay, where to drink (and eat), and things to do. Zoom in to explore your options.

Long Weekend in Milwaukee: Day 1 (Friday)

Calling All Beer Lovers: You’ll Want To Stay at Brewhouse Inn & Suites

If there’s any place that’s rife with beer history in the United States, it’s Milwaukee. I mean, it’s called Brew City, for crying out loud! So when I learned about The Brewhouse Inn and Suites — a premier Milwaukee boutique hotel that’s located on the site of the former Pabst Brewery — I knew I had to stay for a night on my own dime.

The site was in use as early as 1882 as part of Pabst Brewery. Joseph A. Zilber purchased the property in 2006, and the Brewhouse Inn & Suites was completed in April 2013.

Beer lovers, take note: you can roam around the restored copper brew kettles in the hotel! How cool is that?! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the decor is nice and the beds are comfy too. Service was stellar, friendly, and prompt.

After checking in and getting settled around noon, it was time to get this Great Beer Show on the road! Fortunately, I only had to walk a few steps through the hotel to their on-site restaurant, Jackson’s Blue Ribbon Pub, to get my first taste of Pabst beer.

The server convinced me to check out Pabst’s American Pale Ale, and it blew my mind about everything I’d known about Pabst. It was good! It had depth! And it set the tone for the next stop of the day.

⇒ Beer-centric hotel isn’t your jam? That’s perfectly OK. You might want to check out this hotel (recommended to me by friends).

Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery

PBR, or Pabst Blue Ribbon, was actually the very first beer I tried in my life. I hate to say it, but it affected my whole trajectory of beer: I found it so lackluster that I didn’t try beer again for four years. (The second beer I had was Newcastle, for those who are wondering. It made me realize that there was a whole world of beer out there waiting to be explored!)

But in following Julianne’s Third Law of Beer — a cold one usually tastes better in the land of its creation — I knew I had to give it another try in Milwaukee. So I headed on over to Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery for a tour to learn more about Pabst’s past (try saying that three time fast), present, and future.

Tours currently run in the afternoons every day except Tuesday; check the website for the most up-to-date tour times. You can purchase tickets online in advance or in person.

Tours cost $10 and include one pint of either Pabst, Andeker, one of 10 Wisconsin craft beers, or Sprecher root beer. I grabbed a pint of Pabst; turns out I chose wisely as my taste buds were happy.

The tour is really informative, chock full of history and interesting tales. You’ll learn how the brewing company was founded in 1844 by Jacob Best, how it came to be named Pabst, and how — despite being America’s largest brewery in 1874 — Pabst had to shutter its doors in 1996. (Pabst Brewing Company is now a holding company headquartered in Los Angeles that contracts the brewing of 24+ brands of beer and malt liquor.)

You’ll even get to see Captain Pabst’s original desk where he used to work. That furniture is *old* — a thought sobering enough to make me put my pint glass down!

Lakefront Brewery & Fish Fry

Visiting Lakefront Brewery on a Friday night was highly strategic. We were here to indulge in the trifecta of Wisconsin goodness: beer, cheese curds, and the famous fish fry. The Friday fish fry is a big deal in Milwaukee, a longtime culinary tradition that’s alive and kickin’ in this area of the country.

First things first: you HAVE to make time in your schedule for the Lakefront Brewery tour. It’s the BEST brewery tour I’ve ever been on, period. No question, no competition, zilch, zip, nada.

Why, you ask? It all boils down to the tour guides.

Lakefront’s tour guides are renowned for being entertaining, hilarious, and a bit wacky. Our guide had us cracking up every two minutes — and still actually learning and retaining brewery facts! I don’t think I laughed that hard since Amy Schumer’s surprise Friday night set at Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village five years ago. Truly. My gut got a complete workout for free (or $11, the price of tour admission, but still way cheaper than my gym).

Post-tour, we devoured a basket of piping hot cheese curds. I can’t believe it took so long to try these, but man, they are divine!

Long Weekend in Milwaukee: Day 2 (Saturday)

Gorge on Delicious Food at Milwaukee Public Market

I’ve been to some incredible public markets — including Philadelphia and Seattle — so I was excited to check out the Milwaukee Public Market while in town. Located in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward neighborhood, the market features a ton of high quality products and freshly made foods.

The cakes and cookies at C. Adam’s Bakery were a particular highlight for me, as was the Tenderloin blue panini at Foltz Family Market. Cheese fiends, check out West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe to get your daily dose of lactose — they carry over 200 varieties of cheese!

Explore Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward

Since you’re already in the Historic Third Ward, why not explore it some more after you’re through eating lunch at the market?

Take some time out to shop at stores ranging from Anthropologie to MILWORKS, a men’s lifestyle store featuring apparel and small goods. In addition to exploring the area’s locally-owned restaurants and galleries, be sure to stroll down the Milwaukee Riverwalk, which winds through the heart of the city.

Have an Old Fashioned at Drink Wisconsinbly…

Quick: how do you make an Old Fashioned? If you answered with whiskey or bourbon, you’re like most of us. But Wisconsin does it differently: they use brandy.

Kelly recommended Drink Wisconsinbly as a great watering hole for my first Wisconsin Old Fashioned, so I headed over and ordered one. What I didn’t expect was to be asked if I wanted it sweet (with a splash of 7Up or Sprite) or sour (with sour mix or a sour soda like Squirt).

I chose sweet to get the full local experience, but I’m typically a purist when it comes to this cocktail and prefer it more spirit forward. Still, I’ve got to give them points for the cheese curd garnish. Bravo!

…Or at Central Standard Distillery

Central Standard Distillery — which I found by accident just wandering around Milwaukee — makes *awesome* cocktails, and the staff were super friendly and accommodating. Try a flight featuring their spirits, which range from $10 to $17. They also lead tours on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for about $10.

Long Weekend in Milwaukee: Day 3 (Sunday)

Indulge in Milwaukee’s Coffee Scene

Milwaukee has a surprisingly good coffee scene. While Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co, Stone Creek Coffee, and Valentine Coffee Roasters all came highly recommended to me, I chose to visit Colectivo Coffee at 1701 N Lincoln Memorial Drive. Their salted caramel latte warmed my bones on that chilly fall day and gave me the right amount of energy to walk 1.2 miles over to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Milwaukee Art Museum

The Milwaukee Art Museum should be on any first-time visitor’s list. Covering four floors and housing nearly 25,000 works of art, it’s actually one of the largest museums in the US.

You’ll wander around and you might see statues of old men, paintings of happy gray dogs, or a pile of crystals on the floor…

…But whether or not I “got” the art, I saw that the Milwaukee Art Museum clearly values education and accessibility. I really appreciated their artwork guides, which reminded me of those at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

One piece I enjoyed in particular was Robert Gober’s Untitled (1997). What looks like a normal black suitcase reveals a whole watery world below once you look through the grate on the floor. Truly stunning, and I loved it.

You can get lost in this museum for hours — I spent at least two and a half hours roaming through the exhibits — but given the vast amount of artwork in here, you’re bound to find at least something you like!

Harley-Davidson Museum

Prior to visiting Milwaukee’s Harley-Davidson Museum, my primary experience with Harleys came from 1) visiting their Times Square cafe on a middle school field trip in 1999, and 2) being warned of my family’s “motorcycle curse” whereupon members of my family got into motorcycle accidents at age 19 (true story). Between these two incidents, it’s no wonder I shied away from motorcycles altogether.

Still, I knew I had to check out the Harley-Davidson Museum during my weekend in Milwaukee.

The museum, which features over 450 Harley-Davidson motorcycles and hundreds of thousands of artifacts, is really well done. Spanning three buildings on 20 acres, you can learn about Harley-Davidson’s 100+ year history and (if you’re braver than me) even sit on an authentic bike yourself.

SafeHouse: Or, The Most Fun You’ll Have as a Secret Agent in a Bar

Remember when I pretended to be a secret agent at Spyscape’s Missions and Martinis night in NYC last year? SafeHouse in Milwaukee was my second attempt at being a spy with a drink in hand, and it was a total blast.

Your first mission, should you choose to accept it — er, you *have* to accept it if you want to actually get in — is to figure out where the location is.

Once you do, it’s not over yet. If you don’t have the password to get in that night, you’ll be asked to do some hilariously entertaining tests. Oh — and patrons already inside will be watching you on the overhead TV monitors, laughing at your every foolish move. No pressure, James Bond.

Don’t forget to order a cocktail to help you with your spy mission. I ordered the $15 Vesper Lynd cocktail (Plymouth gin, St. Germain, Lillet Blanc and lemon) before sauntering around the spy-themed bar. There’s food available here, too — standard fare like burgers, wings, and mac & cheese.

Once inside, you’ll be given a sheet with a set of clues and asked to solve some puzzles, a la a scavenger hunt. You might wind up going here…

Or here…

Just be sure to watch out for the bathrooms. They’re super tricksy! And word to the wise: if you visit the ladies room, beware of Burt Reynolds. Seriously. I jumped at least a foot off of the ground because of his antics! (PS: your final mission is figuring out how to get out of the joint. It’s harder than it looks, which might explain why it took us 20 minutes to leave.)

Up For Some After Dinner Drinks During Your Long Weekend in Milwaukee?

Still going after dinner and drinks at SafeHouse? Milwaukee has a fantastic bar scene you’ll want to check out, and there’s a range of options for every boozehound.

If you want a classy vibe, check out The Outsider atop the Kimpton Journeyman Hotel. It’s an indoor/outdoor rooftop restaurant and bar with killer views.

If tiki bars are more your thing, you’ll want to visit Foundation Bar on Bremen Street. My eyeballs nearly zapped out of my head when I saw the awesome Polynesian decor — I felt completely transported to a tropical isle of booze heaven. With its potent yet well balanced drinks, it’s won the coveted and highly sought after title of Julianne’s Favorite Tiki Bar. In fact, I liked it so much that next time I might just have to stay in their Airbnb above the bar!

If a dive bar is what you’re after, then Roman Coin on Brady Street is where you’ll want to go. The friendly neighborhood tavern is always packed and lively. You can try a pint of New Glarus Brewing’s Spotted Cow, a popular local brew, while here as well!

Long Weekend in Milwaukee: Day 3.5 (Monday Morning)

It’s Brunch Time!

If you can squeeze in some time for a final morning meal in Milwaukee, I highly recommend Blue’s Egg. While the Milwaukee location is more convenient, we stopped by their Shorewood location and had a minimal wait.

You knew I couldn’t leave Milwaukee without trying a Bloody Mary, didn’t you? Milwaukee does Bloody Marys right. Their garnishes are insane (cold shrimp, mozzarella whips, smoked beef sticks, and Brussels sprouts, anyone?) and their drinks have the right amount of spice.

I sipped on my Bloody Mary at Blue’s Egg, but Kelly highly recommends Wicked Hop, Cafe Benelux, or Sobelman’s for classic Milwaukee Bloody Marys.

Sadly, at this point, you’ll be heading back home or moving on to your next adventure. But never fear: it’s hard to cover the best of Milwaukee in three days, so we know you’ll be back soon!

Did we hit all the right spots during our long weekend in Milwaukee? What did we leave out? Tell us in the comments below!

If you liked this post, check out:

• • Where to Drink in Indiana Right Now
  • How to Fall in Love with Indianapolis in 10 Easy Steps
  • Oh My Guinness!: Touring the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin

Essential Info:
Where should you stay in Milwaukee? Check out all options here.
Where did I personally stay in Milwaukee? I stayed here and recommend it!
Want a guidebook for Wisconsin beer? Check out this one!
What camera did I use for this post? I used our Olympus EM5 Mark II camera with this lens and (and my cell phone).
Have questions for me? Hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest!

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