Our second trip to Chicago was the aforementioned April trip, where we went out for the wedding of a friend of Michael’s from college. This time, we made the grave error of not getting a sleeping car on the overnight train, so we arrived exhausted and hungry Saturday morning. Despite this, we were ready for an awesome three days in the city.
We spent the morning wandering around, and took this picture as we crossed over the Chicago River.
Next, we were off to Macy’s to look for a dress my mum had wanted that was out of stock in Pittsburgh (you can all feel free to nominate me for ‘Daughter of the Year’ any time now). What we found out was that this Macy’s had a wine bar. Yes, I’ll say that again: Macy’s in Chicago has a wine bar. So we stopped in for some yummy cheese and wine at lunch. While we were there, I left our spot for exactly three minutes to go wash my hands, and in that time period, an 80-year-old woman with a walker approached my husband and said, “Are you lonesome?” He did his best to maintain a straight face when telling her his wife was on her way back to the table, and she took off faster than any other old lady with a walker ever has!
Here I am outside of the Macy’s with my mum’s dress after our successful shopping trip.
The wedding we attended was at the Sears Tower, so we had some pretty spectacular views the whole night. Here is the view during dinner, before the sun began to set.
And here is the view after dark. It was so pretty, and the food was quite good, particularly the appetizers. We are just crazy about wedding appetizers.
Rob and Kelly’s wedding also had a great DJ, who played all sorts of our favorite songs. Here we are dancing to “Love Shack” by the B52s! Tiiiiiiin roof!
The next morning, we were off to breakfast at Miller’s, where we met the Pittsburgh waitress. She won her way into my heart by telling me she bought her daughter an Andy Van Slyke folder for school. I was totally going to marry Andy Van Slyke before I met Michael.
After breakfast, we were off on adventures that required public transportation. (I lived in Boston for a time before Michael and I met, and I have a serious love affair with the MBTA that will never be replaced by another subway system, although we always like to check out the options in other cities anyway.)
Stop #1 was Wrigley Field! It was still pre-season, and the Cubbies were not in town, but it was still neat to see the ballpark. (In September, we get to see it again… from inside, with our very favorite live band!)
Stop #2 was the Ukrainian Village! My family is Ukrainian, and after spending four years making pierogies and borscht with us, Michael is now pretty Ukrainian himself, so we just had to stop over and see the sights.
We had dinner at this amazing Ukrainian restaurant called Old Lviv (Lviv is a city in Ukraine) where they greeted us in Ukrainian. I didn’t have the heart to tell the nice boy that the only Ukrainian words I know are curse words, and he politely changed to English. But I had some delicious borscht! Walking into this restaurant smelled like walking into my great-grandmother’s kitchen growing up, where she was always cooking something good.
Michael tried the meat pierogies, since we always make ours for Christmas Eve or Lent (both meatless holidays), so we always make potato and prune. I am getting hungry just thinking about these! We greatly enjoyed our time in the Ukrainian Village, and recommend it to anyone; you don’t even have to be Ukrainian, I promise!
The next morning was our last day in the city, so we started out with a trip to the lake to re-take our lake picture from February. It was significantly less chilly than it had been in February, but still a little cool. I think Michael’s ears were okay though 🙂
We made the looooong walk to the Adler Planetarium (which was my fault – I didn’t realize quite how long a walk it was, oops), and after seeing the nighttime stars show, we took this picture from the other side of the lake, with the city in the background.
And of course we were hungry, so we went to Bennigans for lunch!! In hindsight, that was a bad idea. All we ate was this slider platter, and even splitting it between the two of us, it was a little too big!
After lunch, we needed to do some walking to stay awake, so we went over to Millennium Park to check out the art.
Here I am with the famous Cloud Gate sculpture, which I have to admit, was pretty neat.
Then it was back onto the train and back to the ‘Burgh. Next stop: Chicago – September 18th, Dave Matthews Band at Wrigley Field!! 🙂