Chicago

I'm going to start off by saying that I think Brian is going through a midlife crisis. Thankfully he didn't go out and buy a Harley or a Corvette. Instead, he booked 3 major vacations for this summer and a lot of smaller trips in between. I'm not complaining, though, because we all love to travel. I am planning on writing about all of our fun this summer.

I will begin with Chicago. This is a trip for just the two of us. We arrived in Chicago late Tuesday night and learned the train system right away. The orange line is the only train that runs from the airport to downtown. We even learned how to make a transfer to the red line to get to our hotel.



Yesterday might have been the most perfect day ever in the history of Chicago. Beautiful weather! I still can't figure out why everyone else was wearing pants and jackets. We were among a very few in shorts. The sun was shining and the temperature reached about 75 degrees.

We started our day with donuts. I found this little donut shop on Pinterest, and I have been dreaming about a Butterscotch Praline donut for weeks.



Our next stop was Chicago's First Lady river boat architectural tour. FYI, tickets are about $40 each, but I found a half-price deal on Hottix.

The docents on the tour are all volunteers, and they really know their stuff. We learned about the history of the Chicago River and most of the buildings along the river.



Did you know that they reversed the flow of the Chicago River? I didn't know that was even possible, but they did. The water from the River used to flow into Lake Michigan, but it was contaminating the city's drinking water. So they made the south fork of the River deeper and gravity pulled the water south.

We found our lunch spot while we were touring.



Lizzie McNeill's was a very good lunch spot right in the new River walk. Brian said it was the best Reuben sandwich he has ever eaten. We even had a great view of the fountain at the mouth of the river.



The rest of the afternoon we roamed through Millennium Park. You can't come to Chicago without taking a selfie in "the bean".



A few more pictures of Millennium Park.


Buckingham Fountain


Water feature with hologram faces on brick columns.


Like Michigan. It looks like the ocean!


A bridge from one side of the park to the other. You know that gets hot in the summer!

We finished off the evening at The Second City comedy club where we saw Panic on Cloud 9. Very funny! The man across the aisle from us enjoyed it immensely. We could tell from his laughter. I love people watching.



We stopped for a late night bite at Michael Jordan's Steakhouse. We only stopped because of the name. It did not come highly recommended, but it was very good. The restaurant was closed when we got there, but the bar was still serving food. We shared a filet mignon, Caesar salad, and the creamiest mashed potatoes.