Chicago!

Warning: Extremely long post ahead with probably more details than you want (but not in a gross way).

March 14th marked our 5 year anniversary!  Every year we have been blessed to be able to get away for our anniversary, and 5 years is what I believe to be a milestone, so we wanted to do something kind of big and different. We were thinking of doing a cruise at first but we've done a cruise before and we would need passports, not to mention most places we go to involve the beach so we weren't really sure. Then I started looking in to New York because I LOVE NYC and JR has never been there but it was a little out of our price range. That is when JR brought up the idea of Chicago because it was still a big city, but it's somewhere I hadn't been before. I had never really thought too much about Chicago but I started researching it and got drawn in!  Let's just say I was not displeased, even despite the cold  (which I generally hate).
We had a lot of people recommend things to do and I got a little trip planning crazy (have I mentioned that I love planning trips?) and ordered a map and plotted out all of our destinations and had our agenda a good 3 weeks before we left.  I just hate going on a trip and then spending most of your time sitting around trying to figure out what to do and how to get there. That was NOT happening.  By the time we got to Chicago I practically had that place memorized, so much so that for the first time in our marriage I was the one with a sense of direction and JR was the one turned around. You can make fun of him for that if you want. I did...the whole trip. Rubbed it in quite nicely.  I would just laugh at him and would tell him that whichever way he felt was the correct way he should go the opposite. It worked like a charm.  Anyway, we had quite a few days planned in Chicago.  We flew in on Tuesday and caught the train to downtown and checked in at the Doubletree Hilton.  It was a pretty good location off the Magnificent Mile and a couple blocks from Lake Michigan and a subway station.  Not to mention Hilton's are not so shabby! We were welcomed at the front desk with a warm cookie.  We were sold.  We got to our room anxious to see what our beautiful view of Chicago would hold, threw open the drapes and saw:

So lovely.  After that we got real excited about the snacks sitting on the counter and picked them up to take a closer look.  That is when we realized that the snack bar is weight censored and if you pick something up they bill it to your room.  I immediately sent JR down to let them know we did not in fact want a $7 box of mini snickers.  When he came back up he advised me to grab all of my luggage and follow him. Turns out he requested a different room higher up with a better view. Little clever thoughtful sneak.  Our new view was much more interesting without construction:

Then we found some gems from JR's mission hidden in JR's suitcase that had been forgotten.  We paused to play a bit with them:

 My hair in this next one was CRACKING us up.  Our faces are ok too I guess.  Ah, good times.

That first day it was snowing. JR was quite happy about that and I have to admit they were beautiful big flakes that looked so pretty floating down between all of the cool Chicago architecture.  First on our agenda?  Chicago style deep dish of course.  A friend had recommended Lou Malnati's.  We tried to catch a subway but, surprise, it was out of commission so we braved the cold (something we would become quite familiar with) and walked.  I'm glad we ended up walking because that is the best way to enjoy a city. Here are some views we saw along the way :

 Love, love, loved Lou Malnati's!  First of all, the atmosphere alone was neat.  Our table was in the little sitting room with big overstuffed chairs right next to the window along a busy Chicago street.  And then the food came and it was amazing.  We ordered their most famous pizza which was lined with sausage on the bottom.  I don't usually like sausage but this sausage was no crumbled Pizza Hut sausage.  It was sliced sausage.  We added some pepperoni to that beast and were in business:

After dinner we headed over to Sprinkle's cupcakes.  Did you know there are cupcake ATM's?  There are, and it's glorious.  We went inside to order our cupcakes but they didn't have the kind I wanted so we checked the cupcake ATM and it did not let us down.  Why doesn't every business in the world offer cupcake ATM's? Also, I was very very cold by this point.

We had purchased some City Passes before we came that basically give you admission in to 5 top attractions in Chicago. One of them was the John Hancock Observatory.  Chicago sure is beautiful at night. To bad my camera couldn't capture it very well.  Steady hands is the key to good night photography, steady hands I tell you.  Apparently I have not conquered that talent:

This next picture is a cheater picture. They had a big back drop you can take pictures with.  The views during the day apparently would have been quite lovely too:

We then attempted to walk around some of the shops on the Magnificent mile but they were closed.  I think we did have some luck at a Walgreen's buying JR some gloves and cough drops for me because I felt a sore throat coming on. Luckily it didn't turn in to anything.

Day 2:

We subwayed it down to the south side and found this lovely view on our way:

We started the day at the Field Museum.  

 Looks fun right? It was ok. To be honest I was a little bored and felt more obligated to stay and look around because we had paid so much for our city passes. I may or may not have been content with just seeing the lobby with the T-Rex. Even the underground adventure where you get to see the underground from the view of a bug (shown above) was less than exciting.  I know right?  Perhaps this would be a better experience with kids?  Or perhaps I'm just very non educational.  Either way the best part of this was our trip to the Corner Bakery inside of the museum.  We were welcomed there by a very friendly cashier who advised us that if we filled out slips with our email addresses we could get a free cookie.  Free stuff is not something JR and I tend to pass up.  As promised, our new cashier friend delivered not one, but two free cookies into each of our greedy hands.  Hooked up!  He then said if we filled out a survey online we could get a free pastry too.  You better believe I was hooking up to the wifi on my Ipod filling that survey out and before we knew it we were the proud new owners of a free raspberry bar.

 Afterward we walked up through Grant Park and saw Buckingham Fountain:

 I bet it's amazing when it's not drained for the winter. Haha!  What a disappointment.

 Then we walked through Millennium Park where the famous Cloud Gate or "the bean" is located.  We took about a million pictures of that thing. It was just so oddly cool.

More cool architecture:

And a cool husband too:

The Millennium park is also home to the Crown Fountain. The Crown Fountain is basically two big rectangles with with digitalized pictures of random people's faces on it. When it's not winter (again, lame) the pictures have a stream of water coming out of their mouth.  JR wants to know how he can sign up to get his face up there.  

 This ladies chin cleft is me:

 This is the day we had the pleasure of eating at Portillo's. Another recommendation for Italian Beef sandwiches.  JR got a burger. Boring!  My sandwich was heavenly.

And if that wasn't enough food we then went to Ghirardelli's for an ice cream sundae.  We did not worry about what we ate on this trip. We tried walking around the shops at Magnificent Mile again but apparently we are not very smart because they were all closed again.  So we actually got a red box and headed back to our hotel room.  Hey, it's our vacation, we can relax at least a little bit on it right?

Day 3

More lovely views on the way to breakfast:

Today was our actual Anniversary so we splurged and went to this place called Wildberry Pancakes and Cafe. Oh. My. Goodness.  Please just read this description of my breakfast: Sweet Crepes Filled with Wildberry Mascarpone, Fresh Blackberries, Strawberries and Blueberries.  Topped with Vanilla Cream Anglaise and Blackberry Coulis. I don't even know what some of those words are but I'm pretty sure they translate directly to the word delicious.  

We spent a good chunk of our day at the Art Institute of Chicago. They had a big Picaso exhibit there:

Some Georgia O'Keefe:

 American Gothic anyone?:

 Weird morbid stuff:

 Asian influence/Buddha stuff: 

 Monet:

 Missing something?

Van Gogh :

 Salvador Dali:  

What's with the pom poms and the weird drawers on that lady? 

 Renoir:

 Andy Warhol:

Seurat:

I enjoyed the art much more than the Field museum but I'm still not sure museums are for me.  I'm pretty sure JR did not enjoy the art as much as the Field museum.  

Next we headed over to the Willis Tower (formerly and more commonly known as the Sears Tower) for some day time views of the city. On our way we were waiting for the subway and saw this sign.  "Ain't Nobody Got Time Fo' Date".  Oh famous pop culture:

 The Willis Tower has something called the Skydeck made of glass that you can walk out on.

 It was quite scary.  

 Nice tourist tennis shoes:

And of course we had to hit up the famous Chicago Theater:

We walked around an Old Navy for awhile after that before going back to the hotel to change for our big anniversary date.  We got to go see Jekyll and Hyde!  It was quite good.  American Idle contestant Constantine did an amazing job as Jekyll/Hyde.  I love musicals!

The show was followed by a nice dinner at a place called Grand Lux Cafe off the Magnificent Mile. We got hooked up with a window seat.

 Very nice:

After dinner it was back to the hotel for our gift exchange.  Can I just say it's getting harder and harder to think of presents?  I decide to get JR a new watch since he had his old one for a long time.  

Figured he might like a change:

 Luckily, JR's present was small enough to be able to pack to come with us. JR had to be quite clever with mine though.  I guess a couple weeks earlier he took the below picture on his phone and when it came time to present my gift he text it to my phone, had a pre-wrapped box ready that he could open and close allowing him to slide my phone in and present me with my present. So when I opened my gift I found my very own phone in there. When I checked my text I found this:

I cannot believe he got me a Kitchen Aid!  I have been talking about wanting one of those since we got married.  I'm pretty sure we registered for one for our wedding but who spends that much money on a wedding gift?  Anyway, apparently he got a smoking deal from Kohl's between them price matching an online offer, discounts with a Kohl's card, and a rebate.  It's one of the bigger professional models. I LOVE it!  Flash forward a couple weeks and you'd find this in my kitchen:

I have never been able to get dough right, but my first attempt at bread with the Kitchen Aid turned out pretty dang good if I do say so myself.  What an amazing anniversary we had!  And the best part? We still have 2 more days in Chicago to keep the party going! (Yep, there is more. Lucky you)

Day 4

We finished off our City Passes today at the Shedd Aquarium. On our way we decided to get a little crazy and do this:

Hahahahah! Grant park has 106 of these strange leg statues all clumped together.  How do people think of these things?  No matter, we are just glad they did.  

We had been lucky all week to not have to wait in line for anything but the aquarium was pretty packed. 

Luckily, the City Passes allow you to go in what Disney would consider a "Fast Pass" line.  It was quite convenient.  The unfortunate part was even though we got to skip ahead in line the aquatic shows were all sold out.  We didn't get the Sea World experience we were hoping for but we still got to see some pretty cool stuff. Mostly fish.  Fish are really hard to take pictures of.

Sting Rays are so smiley:

 Speaking of sting rays, have you guys ever seen the sting ray photo bomb picture on the internet?  It makes me chuckle every time I see it so I think I will share it now:

Moving on...the fish below is a country bumpkin.  He's got a weird one tooth look going on. Duh da duh...

 And then we get to the most random part (which just so happened to be my favorite part) of the aquarium: the fuzzy little marmoset monkey.  Why did they have a monkey amongst all of these sea creatures?  I cannot tell, but he was so cute!  JR and I talk about kitties a lot...a lot.  When I think of something that is super cute I think of kitties.  So when I saw this little guy I decided that marmoset's are the kitties of the trees.

The rest of the day was spent in more of the north part of the city. 

We had a nice long subway ride to Wrigley field:

 As you can tell, we were getting some rain on day 4.  I had brought umbrellas on the trip just in case, but the past 3 days I hadn't given any thought to bringing them with us. For some reason when I woke up that morning I decided we should go check the weather to see how cold it was.  I'm pretty sure that was inspired because it's the first time in 3 days we checked the weather and it just so happened to be calling for rain. We probably wouldn't have brought the umbrellas if we hadn't, and it rained pretty much all day so I'm really glad we did or else we would have been miserable.  We walked off the subway by Wrigley Field and must have been following JR's directions or something (JK, I think it was me this time) because we ended up almost walking in a complete circle in the rain before reaching the famous Wrigley Field sign.  So for those of you who are taking the subway to Wrigley field, I'll give you a hint, take a left.

 I did a lot of researching trying to find cool places to eat at in Chicago.  I was watching the Food Network's show "Diners, Drive ins, and Dives" a couple months before our trip and they were featuring this place:

So, I took note and made it happen. 

 They even make their own spicy ketchup there. It was yummy.  One of JR's school buddies told us to go to Dinkel's bakery.  Apparently it's one of those bakeries that has been around for like 50 years and everyone in the neighborhood knows it.  There were so many pretty goodies there it was hard to decide what to get.  We may or may not have gotten a caramel flavored eclaire looking thing, a piece of chocolate cake with white chocolate mouse, a german chocolate yummy square, and two cookies.  In our defense, the cookies were free.  I'm not sure what it is with Chicago and free cookies but I'm not hating it. If it's free do the calories sill count?  

 We actually had a couple hours to spare after that so we went back to our hotel room and chilled before packing on the winter night gear and heading back up north to the Briar Street theater for a little something people like to call "The Blue Man Group".  

 JR and I had heard good things about the show but didn't really know much about it.  It's kind of hard to explain it without it just sounding plain weird. The whole theater is devoted to the Blueman Group so the whole thing we decked out in with these tubes and other strange things:

 The show was so fun!  We had bought tickets in what they call the Poncho section.  Fairly named because anyone sitting in the poncho section is supplied with a poncho to protect themselves from things that may fly off the stage, like paint...and mashed up twinkies.  It also meant that we got to be really close to the stage. I think we were in row 6 or something.  Much to JR's disappointment, nothing flew off the stage and dirtied our ponchos. He was really looking forward to coming out of there drenched in paint.

The show was at 10 pm show so by the time we got out it was pretty late.  Nevertheless, we were dedicated to our Chicago experience and went out of our way to hit up a true Chicago dive called the "The Weiner's Circle".  This was an experience to say the least.  I forget who even recommended it to us but it's basically known for being a late night hang out where if you go there you can pretty much count on being verbally accosted by the staff.  I've probably never heard so many curse words in a 30 minute time period in my life and one customer did in fact get flashed by a large woman behind the counter which I unfortunately witnessed.  Luckily, JR was turned the other direction looking for the camera.  I knew we would get a stomach full of hot dogs and an ear full of vanities but who knew we'd also get an eye full?  I certainly could have done without that.

 In this place's defense, the hot dog we shared was indeed delicious.  

It may have been in the middle of the night, and we may have been walking in the ghetto in like 20 degree weather but we still stopped for slurpies at 7 Eleven.  We just couldn't resist their new Berry Pomegranate flavor.  All in all, I would say the whole day was an adventure.  

Day  5(don't worry, this is the last day)

Our plane wasn't leaving until after 9pm so we pretty much got a whole extra day in Chicago, we dropped our luggage with the hotel concierge and were off once again.  This is the first day we really got anywhere near the waters edge of Lake Michigan.  Unfortunately, it was probably the coldest day as well.  Chicago has a famous Pier called Navy Pier.  We thought it was just a pier with a carnival, hosting one of the U.S.'s largest ferris wheels. 

Do I look cold?  I was.  The wind was blowing so hard that apparently my eyes were watering and my scarf was pulled up so far up my face that I had unknowingly rubbed mascara all over my face.  JR got quite a kick out of that.  We saw a McDonald's on the Pier so decided to go inside so I could clean up my face and we could get warm for a second and upon entering the McDonald's we discovered that Navy Pier is more than meets the eye.  The McDonald's opened up into a huge inside strip mall with shops and tons of food places.  I was pretty thankful because this way we got to walk the pier without the cold.  We picked up some treats from a fudge place and sat ourselves down on a bench by a little kids train ride. I think by this point in the trip we had lost some momentum because we sat there for an unusual amount of time.  Realizing we were wasting our last day we mustered up some energy and walked the mall.  

Please notice that my mascara is pretty much gone in the above picture. Thanks wind!  We had been told on a couple occasions that while we were in Chicago we needed to go to Garrett's Popcorn.  We saw a Garrett's popcorn at Navy Pier but there was a line that seemed kind of long and we were planning on going back to the magnificent mile and we knew there was one there so in an attempt to save us some time we skipped it. Bad idea.  When we got to the 2nd Garrett's location there was a much much longer line out the door so not only did we have to wait longer, we also had to wait outside. Fail.  I guess we weren't really thinking that it would be so busy because nothing had really been too busy during our whole trip.  However, this was a Saturday, and it was the day before St. Patricks day.  Apparently Chicago is a big celebrator of St. Patties. They dye the river green and have a big parade, etc.  We missed all of that so we could sleep in. Gotta pick your  battles, sleep in or fight mass crowds?  Perhaps we missed a once in a life time experience missing the dying of the river but, eh, oh well.  Everyone was decked out in green with crazy hats and necklaces.  But now I've gotten off subject...so Garrett's was very yummy popcorn.  I got chocolate covered caramel corn.

And then just as we started our trip with Chicago style deep dish pizza, we thought 

it appropriate to end our trip the same way.  We had already eaten at Lou Malnati's so we decided to try

 the other big name in Chicago pizza, Giordano's.  From our understanding you are either a Lou Malnati's person or a Giordano's person.  

When we went to Giordano's there was going to be an hour wait. That was not going to happen and still make our flight.  So we walked out, pulled out our cell phone and called in an order to go.  We found a nearby mall and ate our pizza there. 

 It was good....but we decided to side with the Lou Malnati's people.  Congratulations Lou Malnati's!  

 And that wrapped up our trip. The rest was just a subway  ride back to the airport and a smooth flight home.  I really enjoyed Chicago!  I would definitely recommend it as a vacation destination, and someday I hope to get back there myself...just hopefully it won't be in the winter next time.  I bet it's beautiful when there are leaves in the trees and water in the fountains.  I'm really glad that we decided to do Chicago instead of a cruise.  It was a great way to celebrate 5 amazing years with my super awesome hubby!