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Writer's pictureR&R Real Perspective

The Windy City

It really wasn't that windy...the weather was, in fact, perfect!

 

We had traveled to Chicago together one time before for a wedding. We had our daughter with us - she was 18 months old, and she had just come down with bronchitis. So she was on a steroid and grumpy pills apparently. She screamed the entire 7 hour drive to Chicago. She proceeded to cry everywhere we went. Chicago wasn't all that great 7 years ago, and I suppose that's why it had little appeal to me for vacationing.

 

This summer had gone by quickly enough...too quickly. We were having the best summer...so much family time...softball, a trip to Wisconsin Dells and Perham, MN; a trip across Iowa, the zoo, and plenty of family walks and movie nights. Jake and I really wanted to get away, just the two of us, before school started up and our schedule went bonkers!


We booked flights to Tucson to catch a concert...but that didn't work out. We booked flights to San Fransisco, but some little girl had to be a plate in a play that weekend (Kamryn was in Beauty and the Beast). Time was running out, and we thought if we could find a destination that was just a short flight away that would be perfect. We could fly out Friday evening and be home Sunday night. Less burden on the babysitters (aka - Grandma and Grandpa).


Whelp. Chicago then.

 

We did as planned...left work on Friday at 4:00pm and headed to the airport in Omaha. We were there much too early...but...it was all for the best. We got to sit about a a table away from Bill Murray.

Yah. That's real. We had grabbed coffee, and then went around to the other side of the "Food Court" in the terminal to grab a table and a glass of wine, and guess who was behind us! We left him alone, but discreetly snapped a pic of him. He sat with his "chaperone" and did the crossword between photos and autographs. People are so awkward.

Merlot, Blue Moon and Coffee...

Our flight was fast - I was able to watch part of "Glass" - the movie that came after "Unbreakable". I actually liked it much better than the first movie, so I was kinda excited to watch the rest on the way home.

Excited to fly. Anxious for our luggage! (Actually, I think the pic of me standing there "impatiently" is actually me posing as "Denim Diana".) Don't ask.

 

We landed in Chicago around 9:00pm. By the time we got our luggage and hopped in our Uber from the airport to the hotel, it was closer to 9:30pm. Traffic was horrendous. Guess why. La La Palooza. Yes. La La Palooza....droves of scantily and bizarrely clad girls and guys wearing board shorts and tank tops...entering the crosswalks. It was like watching "The Walking Dead" but with sweaty oddly dressed teenagers. Okay. They were probably 21. Jake and I realized on this vacation that a 21 year old looks like a 15 year old these days. Are we really THAT old? Regardless, where were they all headed anyway? Did one mom drop ALL of them off at "the library"? Eventually, we figured it out. I'll tell ya later where they were going...

 

Our hotel, (No they weren't going to our hotel. I'm going to tell you about those kids MUCH later). Anyway, our hotel, the LondonHouse Chicago, was eclectic. As we walked into the hotel, there was a restaurant to the right (I believe it was a seafood place), to the left were the elevators (and a ridiculous line of young people waiting to get into the posh rooftop bar), and straight ahead was a set of stairs to the main lobby. Jake had checked-in online, so we headed to the elevators first (bypassing the valet and party goers).


The view from our room was awesome! Apparently the only daytime picture we took, and by "we" I mean Jake, was from the bathroom...can you guess where Jake is sitting?

But I'm telling you....it was absolutely spectacular. We were on the 16th floor, and our hotel was right on the Riverwalk. The style of the room was definitely modern, but had some Art Deco flare...I loved it...sorry I didn't take a picture. You can check out their rooms online!

We headed down to the Riverwalk because we just had to! We strolled along the Riverwalk until we didn't feel....comfortable...all of a sudden it looked less than safe. We had this impression that Chicago was really dangerous. I don't know that it was the wrong impression by any means, but I think the Riverwalk and surrounding area are probably fairly safe. But anyway, we headed back towards the hotel to find a place to get a nightcap. It was getting late, and we're getting old.

We found Hoyt's American Tavern....with outside dining options, it was a perfect location for people watching! And a champagne flight?? Well, soytanly.

 

The next morning, we got up fairly early to start site-seeing! The city looked SO much different in the daylight....it was awesome!

We just started walking - towards "The Bean". We found breakfast, tall buildings, the Chicago Cultural Center, Millennium Monument, and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion where folks were doing outdoor yoga!


But then we found The Bean! Cloud Gate!

Well. That was fun.


Off to Navy Pier! We WALKED and WALKED and WALKED...how in the world do we even get there? Despite it taking forever to get there, the walk was beautiful. Eventually we found it...weren't all that impressed. Okay...I shouldn't be so negative about it. We were REALLY early. Not much was open. We did notice that they were revamping the area a bit. You know, where you could walk inside to go from place to place, and it smelled like homeless people might have spent the night using the hallway as their restroom? They seem to be redoing THAT area. And I'm sure there were other things happening there, but we weren't digging it. So we grabbed coffee, and a water taxi.

We shared the water taxi with a HILARIOUS woman who was with her children...and she was trying to get them to pose with her in pictures...and she had her daughter (who was probably 7) take pictures of HER (the mom, not the daughter) posing...you can only imagine. It was AWESOME!


But the morning had come and gone, and it was time to head on to our next adventure...Wrigleyville!


Jake thought it would be a spectacular idea to ride the "L" to the ballpark. It wasn't a terribly far walk to our "ride," but we thought we better make a pitstop at Emerald Loop. We had a cocktail and admired their ingenious use of the scaffolding in front of their building. Brilliant.

But it was time to go...to my first ever subway ride...

I don't know that I would intentionally try to ride the "L" again. It was fine. We got where we needed to go inexpensively. But the stop and go and stop and go...it was making me nauseous. So...not my fav!


We found Wrigley Field though! And The Dugout very near Wrigley Field. It was hot that day, and I'm not much for baseball in general...so sweating at the ball field while watching a team I don't know squat about was not high on my bucket list. Lunch sounded like a great idea! And check out that woman's boots!

One thing we CAN take off of our bucket list...the Fish Bowl. "That normally serves 6 to 8 people," the bartender says. Jake looks in my direction, and I say, "Get it." Challenge ON.

Was that a good idea? I dunno. We each had a giant piece of cheese pizza before...surely that soaked up the alcohol, right? I mean...we still had to ride the "L" back to our hotel and go to dinner that night. I bet you're wondering if we made it!

Well, first I decided to take these amazing pictures and then Jake took a picture of our dinner at STK...what the heck is on his plate? Red yarn? How did we not see that? I'm sure it's something else...Anyway, STK was like being transported back to the 80's if the 80's was trying to guess what 2020 was going to look like. I swear they were playing 80's music but everything was brand new but looked old. Check out their website - you'll see what I mean.


But we survived! I don't know how. But we managed to get ourselves semi-fancy and go to a semi-fancy dinner.


We even felt like going to The Lobby Bar at our hotel afterwards where there was a one-man band. People-watching was perfect there! Huge glass windows, and amazing views! Huge chairs...fancy cars....


We decided to order some deep dish pizza from Uber Eats. I don't know where the pizza was from, but we decided to wait outside for our pizza guy...he delivered it on a bike. It was quite exciting watching his progress on the gps! LOL. Oh boy.


When I woke up the next morning, I decided I never wanted to eat pizza again. Or order a fish bowl. Then I realized it was only 5:00 am. I could keep sleeping. And so I did...until 8:30 or 9:00...Jake was a dear and found a Starbucks and brought back coffee and a bagel for me. I decided I didn't like bagels anymore.

 

But it was time to get on with it. I managed to pull myself together, and we began our last day's tasks.


More walking.


I think that's why we indulge while on vacation. We know we're going to walk 15 miles a day.


The first thing we decided to do on Sunday was find the Centennial Fountain and Arc. We had noticed it during our water taxi ride the day before. Isn't it gorgeous! I mean, the fountain yes, but the pretty plants! I couldn't get over how neat it looked. There was a hotel next to the fountain, and they had a covered patio/terrace. It was really nice...

But Jake had been up quite a bit longer than I had been at this point, so he was on the hunt for some coffee.


During our search, we found the most ADORABLE townhomes. I wish I had taken a picture. They were PERFECT. They weren't too far from the fountain or the strangest Target I ever did see. But inside that Target was a Starbucks....and Jake stood in the ridiculous line to get coffee, a bottle of water for me, and a blueberry scone (that all of a sudden sounded delicious to me).


We walked around a bit more, and headed back to our hotel to finish packing, check out, and leave our luggage with the valet.

After our break, we decided to find Willis Tower and check out the views.


On our way, we started noticing that as we got closer to Willis Tower, we saw more and more kids (like the La La Palooza crowd). Like tons of them. My theory was that maybe they were all staying in hotels in the area...I was most likely wrong....so we still hadn't figured out why they were traveling the way they were. In herds.


So we finally found the building, and here's my advice...Don't worry about buying tickets ahead of time. Just go to the building. Follow the signs to the bottom floor, and then buy your fast passes online while you're there (cuz they sell them by the hour, and who knows when you're actually going to be there? And smartphones are amazing.). The fast passes are more expensive (obviously), but they're SO worth it. There are so many people waiting to get in. You buy the pass, you skip the lines. The longest wait we had was to get on the elevator to go up to the top (and that was after we skipped a whole bunch of people waiting to get in the line for the elevator). When you get to the top, you can take in the view at your own pace. And when it's time to stand on glass 1,000 feet in the air...you just walk to the front of the line, and you're the next to go. You have NO time to chicken out.


One of the funniest things about Willis Tower was a group of foreign twenty somethings taking selfies and posing like models. It was all I could do to not start laughing hysterically.