What a great idea — if only I had thought of it: take a trip to Madison, Wis.; stay in a cozy bed- and-breakfast; get around by bike; test out burgers, brats, cheese curds and microbrews; and look for some booze to bring back home.  Two weeks ago, I left my travel plans up to a reader vote that just as easily could have had me staying at a chain motel in Nashville and touring city parks by public bus. But Madison and food and drink and bikes won, and I spent last weekend reveling in a cyclist-friendly city of 230,000 with a restaurant and bar scene that punches well above its demographic weight.  Because I was planning this trip at the last minute, there were a couple of hitches: the cheapest flight to Madison from New York was $800, more than twice as much as I’ve ever spent on a domestic flight in this job. And the lowest-priced bed-and-breakfast with available rooms in Madison was $150 a night, way above my budget.  So I scrambled for alternatives, booking a US Airways flight to Milwaukee via Charlotte on Thursday ($149.90) and a direct Frontier Airlines flight back from Milwaukee on Sunday ($186.20). Milwaukee to Madison would be by Badger Bus, for $41 round trip.  The only bed-and-breakfast I could find in my price range was the Parsonage in McFarland, a suburb about 10 miles out of town that had a small room for a single traveler for $74 a night. That meant adding 20 extra miles to my daily bike routine. Good for burning cheese curd calories, but could I ride safely at night? And what if it rained?  Turned out I could, and it didn’t (much).  Madison is the only gold-certified Bicycle Friendly Community east of the Mississippi, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been amazed that almost my entire route to and from the Parsonage was on bike trails or roads with separate cycling lanes. The friendly sales staff at Machinery Row Bicycles rented me a solid hybrid from Wisconsin-based Trek for $20 a day and sold me a nifty, two-sided red and white flashing light to attach to my helmet for night riding. And though my commute took me past some dreary commercial real estate, I got a chuckle every time I passed the unmanned, self-service pumpkin sale along Marsh Road in McFarland where the sign read “PUT MONEY IN COFFIN.” (A small coffin was available for deposits.) Getting around the city itself was really easy: half the time I was on beautiful bike paths (like the Capital City Trail), and there were bike lanes and bike racks everywhere.  My days started and ended at the Parsonage, an 111-year-old house that for decades was a home to ministers of the nearby Lutheran church. It’s not chic : I don’t know what the thread count was on my sheets and I’m betting the owners, Craig and Cathy Wrobel, don’t either. But rooms are cozy, the dogs are friendly, and Craig puts together a homemade, never-the-same-twice breakfast, from soufflés with white Cheddar to a pumpkin and cream cheese kringle (a filled pastry of Scandinavian origin).  Despite filling breakfasts, my mission was to get out and eat and drink, and then eat and drink some more. Armed with an impossibly long list of restaurants and bars to try, I crisscrossed Madison from the University of Wisconsin campus on the west side (which is also home to the Babcock Hall Dairy, makers of my first Madison “meal,” an excellent cone of orange custard chocolate chip), across the isthmus splitting Lakes Mendota and Monona that serves as the center (and location of the State Capitol, home to a fantastic farmers’ market on Saturdays) and as far east as the Ale Asylum, a brewery that serves up a generously portioned sampler of 10 beers for $20.  The drinking options alone were staggering. It’s almost impossible to find a beer on tap that’s not made in Wisconsin. The bustling Old-Fashioned, a popular bar and restaurant across from the Capitol, serves more than 50 beers on tap, all from Wisconsin, and more than 100 in cans or bottles, with just one that is not: Grainbelt from Minnesota, which is pointedly listed under “Imports.” And people here know beer. I’m usually happy to argue that New York City is the height of sophistication, but I could only cringe as I compared Wisconsin’s vast beer choices with the Amstel Lights and Stellas at many New York bars.  I quickly gained a soft spot for New Glarus beers, for two reasons. One, its Moon Man pale ale is crisp and clean and redolent of grapefruit; it even tasted to me as if it had a refreshing splash of gin in it. (It didn’t.) Two, New Glarus prohibits sales anywhere outside the state. It seemed the obvious choice to fulfill the readers’ mandate that I bring home an alcoholic beverage as a memento, but then I realized: whatever I bought, I’d have to lug around on my bike.  So I decided to go counterintuitive: in an amazing beer city, I’d bring home liquor from the Old Sugar Factory, a new distillery named after the decaying factory on Madison’s east side that processed local sugar beets in the early 20th century. The distillery runs an on-site bar, where bartenders mix beautiful cocktails ($6-$7) like a sazerac made from the company’s sorghum whiskey and dole out tastes of unsweetened rum, ouzo and dry honey liqueur. I bought a bottle of that liqueur, a perfect (and perfectly transportable) way to fulfill my take-home booze obligation.  There was a lot of eating with all that drinking, of course. Though I had imagined myself eating bratwurst, Cheddar and cheese curds the whole weekend, Madison turned to be as much a burger town as anything else. I tried the famed Plaza burger, staple of campus post-boozing life, and found it excellent in a greasy spoon kind of a way. And the cheeseburger at the Laurel Tavern on the west side was a $5 masterpiece. But my favorite was the black and blue burger (with bacon and hot sauce), $7.29 at Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry. Stand-out sharp flavors, and not so much burger to fit in your mouth, important if you’re trying not to stuff yourself before a bike ride.  The one ballyhooed burger I didn’t much care for was Bob’s Bad Breath Burger at the Weary Traveler Freehouse (fantastic organic meat, perfectly medium rare, but loaded with cream cheese, not my thing), but I did love the place: old-fashioned phones on the tables, Lao Tzu quotes on the wall, and bathrooms wallpapered with old maps. (Botswana used to be called Bechuanaland? Who knew?) The late-afternoon company was friendly too in a let’s-dress-hipsterish-and-talk-about-our-kids’- kindergarten-teachers way. And I perked up when someone handed Pepper, the bartender, a bag of raw chicken hearts. To me, chicken hearts are Brazilian barbecue food, and I said as much to Pepper. Turns out he lived for more than a decade in the Amazon and married a Brazilian. I wondered how she tolerated the harsh Madison winters. “Every inch of snow,” he said, “I’m a little closer to being divorced.”  My best meal was not a burger at all, but a Laotian dinner at Lao Laan-Xang, near the Weary Traveler at 1146 Willy Street. I hadn’t given much thought to local immigrant cuisine, but after seeing several Laotian spots around, I called an audible. And though it was packed on the night I was there, the blond (i.e., non-Laotian) waitress sat down with me to explain the menu. If I liked kimchi (the spicy fermented Korean cabbage dish), she said, I should get the fried chicken with thum som, an unripe papaya salad. Weirdly, she was right: savory, spicy shreds of fruit somehow gave off a kimchi vibe.  I have a very forgiving stomach but even so, I had to stop eating occasionally and visit a few Madison cultural attractions. Every single one was free, unless you count the 25 cents I dropped on a map of the grounds of the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. The gardens were shockingly lovely, a colorful, calm escape from a city that there’s not much need to escape from. I also took a nice walk out to Picnic Point around Lake Mendota (which included a stop by a Friday afternoon campfire for a complimentary swig of whiskey from a guy named Jay), did the requisite tour of the State Capitol with a peppy guide named Catie, strolled through the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and watched mesmerized as Cosmo-Joe, a street artist outside the museum, created art using spray paints and all kinds of quirky doodads. I also happened to be in town for the opening of a brand new wing of the university’s impressive Chazen Museum of Art.  This is more a football town than an art town, though, and the big event of the weekend was the Wisconsin Badgers game at Michigan State. I settled into State Street Brats (packed with students and families clad in Badger red) to have a $4.50 sausage, drink a pint of Leinenkugel beer (from Wisconsin, obviously) and watch the first half, and then biked back downtown to catch the rest of the game (and close out my weekend of drinking) at the Great Dane, yet another brew pub. I ordered one of the cask ales, called Bold and Old Mild, and settled in: Wisconsin lost a heart-breaking, headline-making game via instant-replay in the very last second.  Somehow, the next day, the town was back up on its feet, serving me more beers and burgers and cheese curds before I dropped my bike off and left town. But I guess it’s easier to take a tough loss when you have so much good food to do it with. And plus, the Packers game was starting soon.
You asked for it, and here it is: the Frugal Traveler took a trip to Madison, Wis., with all the bells and whistles chosen by readers.