Since flying became such an ordeal, I've been driving back home every year to visit my parents in Indiana, and Cleveland, Ohio is about halfway.
It has the Flex Spa, one of the best gay resorts in the U.S., housed in the old Greyhound Station (2600 Hamilton). Downstairs there's an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a steam room-maze, a bar and restaurant, lounge areas, and a fully equipped gym.
Upstairs are the private rooms, porn theater, dark rooms, and a rooftop lounge area.
You can get a full-sized hotel room and spend the night, but it's in a nasty neighborhood, so you should stay elsewhere.
There are two good restaurants nearby:1. Slyman's Deli, 3106 St. Clair, for enormous portions of corned beef and Christian fundamentalist tracts.
2. Siam Cafe, 3951 St. Clair, for the best Pad Thai outside of Bangkok.
In between sessions at the Flex Spa, drive east on Euclid to University Circle, where all of the museums in town are arranged in a walkable loop: The Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Art, the Institute of Art. Other than the hunky Carnegie-Mellon students jogging around the Wade Oval, the best beefcake sights are in Museum of Art (on East Drive).
1. Hosner's Sleeping Faun (above)
2. Rodin's Age of Bronze.
3. Bandelli's Nude Study (left)
4. Meynier's Apollo.
5. Jacques-Louis David's Cupid and Psyche. Ok, he's with a woman, but you have to admire the smirk!
6. Minne's Solidarity, two naked guys hugging.
More after the break
7. Behind the Museum of Art, the massive, nude Thinker leads the way to a nice formal garden sprinkled with beefcake statues.
8. Such as Boy with Panther Cub.
9. The City: Fettering Nature (left)
10. And Beach's The Sun Drawing the Waters.
11. Next, head downtown, for the statue of Jurisprudence on the Federal Building. Jurisprudence is a naked woman, but there's a naked, muscular man at her feet, asking for a favor.
12.And Energy in Repose, on the Reserve Bank Building.
