For Meghan’s birthday, she requested that we go to Chicago, so she could see a couple friends, and also show me her old neighborhood where she lived as a kid. I had been to Chicago before, but only to drive through it. So we took Thursday and Friday off of work and had a nice 4 day weekend in the Windy City.
We got up Thursday morning at 6am to catch a 9am flight to Chicago. This was early for me, and I was a grump. But we got coffee on the way and the flight was uneventful. We got into Chicago around 10:30. We had rented a car (a first for both of us), so after picking up our luggage, we headed to the National Car Rental place. We ended up with a Impala, which was about perfect. From there it was on to the hotel.
We had picked our own price through Priceline and ended up staying at the Hotel Felix, a very nice hotel whose rooms are roughly the size of most people’s bathrooms. We couldn’t help but laugh when we saw the room because it was literally a 12X12 square with a queen size bed in it. Which meant that the room was a bed with two feet of space around each side. We were only staying one night there, though, and we hadn’t planned on hanging out in the room anyway, so it was all good.
We decided to have lunch at Portillo’s, a local “hot dog” chain. I had a delicious jumbo chili dog. After lunch, we stopped by the Rock N Roll McDonald’s, about three blocks from our hotel. It’s basically a regular McDonald’s, except way bigger, and with a tiny Rock N Roll Exhibit next to it. According to Wikipedia, there’s a small museum on the upper level too, but we must have missed it.
We decided to walk around a bit, and since we had planned on going to the Field Museum, we walked in that general direction. We started out going what I thought was east, but ended up being south. We kept looking for Michigan Ave and checking the GPS on my phone, but we never seemed to get any closer to it. Eventually we figured out that the GPS on was just plain wrong, and we were going in the wrong direction. After walking about a mile or so, our feet were getting tired, so we decided to try out the subway. We had no idea how to ride the subway in Chicago (Meghan’s been on the New York subway, I hadn’t been on any subway), but, after wandering around the subway station*, we managed to buy a transit card and successfully navigate to the train. We got off within a couple blocks of the Field Museum.
The Field Museum, as it turned out, was pretty boring. I’m sure if we’d been less tired it would have been more interesting, but being that we’d been up since 6am and flown into Chicago and then walked over a mile… well, we were tired. As it turned out, general admission to the museum was free that day, so we bought tickets to see the Diamond exhibit, which was basically a big lo’ How-To on diamond mining. I learned that diamonds stick to grease. I think about 10 minutes in, we were both ready to do somewhere else but I was determined to get my 10 bucks worth. They did have some interesting jewelry pieces on display once we got past all the diamond mining training material. We also took a quick walk through the ancient Egypt exhibit, which basically confirmed that mummies are freaky.
We decided then that the thing to do would be to get a drink. So we decided to take the subway back up to the John Hancock building and have a drink at the bar that’s at the top of it. We got out at Chicago Ave and walked by the old water tower. We weren’t exactly sure how to get up to the bar at the John Hancock building, and ended up taking a tour of the observatory, which, as it turned out, was pretty awesome. The views were amazing. After the tour, we figured out how to actually get to The Signature Lounge, and had a couple cocktails next to a window overlooking downtown Chicago from about a 1000 feet up in the air. It was pretty awesome.
By that point it was around 4:30pm, so we decided to make a reservation for dinner at the Rosebud on Rush. So we hopped in a cab and went back to the hotel to freshen up. By the time we got to the restaurant (which was a 4 block walk from our hotel) around 6pm, we were pretty much dead to the world with exhaustion. The restaurant was really nice and the food was good though. And Meghan really liked the Cendrica Italian candy.
After dinner, we decided to check out an Irish Pub we saw on our earlier walk that was less than a block away from our hotel called The Kerryman. We had planned on grabbing a couple drinks with Meghan’s childhood friend Jessica, who lives near Chicago and happened to be in the city for dinner that night. So we had a couple beers at the Kerryman while we tried to coordinate with her. As it turns out, we weren’t able to hook up with her that night, but we had a good time hanging out at the Kerryman. We headed back to the hotel around 10:30 and the bartender made fun of us for turning in so early.
The next day, we headed out of downtown Chicago for the suburbs. Meghan used to live in Naperville when she was a kid and wanted to drive by her old house. On the way down, Meghan called Jessica and we decided to have lunch together. So we drove to Shorewood and picked her up and had lunch at a little sports bar near her house.
After lunch, we headed to Naperville and Meghan gave me the driving tour of her former hometown, including her house, her other house, her elementary school, and several of her friends’ houses. She amazed me with her ability to remember basically every kid on her block’s name.
Then it was time to go to her friend Jen’s house, who would be housing us for the rest of the weekend. Jen & her husband just had a baby in October, so we were excited to see the new addition. They were good hosts, even though they were completely delirious with the exhaustion that comes with being new parents. Friday night, we went to dinner at a Texas Roadhouse, where we ate barbeque and delicious fresh buns with cinnamon butter, and then spent the night in Jen & Wojtek’s newly renovated basement, which has the distinction of being perhaps the warmest place on earth I’ve ever slept in.
Saturday morning, we got up and ate Lucky Charms and watched TV with baby Finn and the two pugs. Then Jen brought us donuts. Yum! Later, Jen & Meghan made Meghan’s birthday cake (yellow cake w/ chocolate frosting). We hung out for a while and then two more of Meghan’s friends came over and we all went out to dinner at The Clubhouse, where I had a delicious ribeye and Carlsberg Lager.
Then before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and time to go home. So we did. Then the Vikings beat the crap out of the Cowboys. LOL Wooo!
* – while waiting for the subway at the station, I was a little worried about getting mugged or something until I saw this girl in a plaid mini-skirt standing nearby. I figured if she felt safe there, it must be safe and that made me feel better. Until her pimp showed up.