Chicago

The Windy City! That is where we headed last week for our anniversary. It was an adventurous trip with lots to do in a few short days. Let me give you the quick and condensed version of our days in the big city. We arrived the first day and our plane landed at 8:30 am, so we had the whole day to play. We were set to see a show, Peter Pan, after lunch so we had a few hours to explore and figure out this whole city bus transportation stuff. Yikes... we got on our first bus and missed the stop so we kept riding it thinking it would turn around eventually.... not the case. This sweet man finally asked us if we needed help and told us to get off and walk across the street and wait for the bus coming the other way. Thankfully we had plenty of time because we got a nice tour of parts of the city that we probably shouldn't have been in. The show was great and afterwards we went to eat at Ed Debevicks... where they are extremely rude to you.. on purpose. It's quite the atmosphere!

The next day we were up bright and early and there you see me at that lovely bus stop again.. we were determined to get it right this time. We headed to Navy Pier and I guess you could call it somewhat of a big carnival on Lake Michigan. We took an architectural river boat cruise through the city and saw lots of amazing buildings that we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I will spare you the 75 pictures sweet boy took of all the buildings we passed, he loves some history. Matt even had a good conversation with some man in the park too.

We spent a little more time exploring Navy Pier, ate at Harry Carey's for lunch and then went to the beach. There was a beach on Lake Michigan about 2 blocks from our hotel. Matt put his feet in, said it was freezing, I sat on a stump instead. We had to hit up the Hershey store because they were giving away free samples (went back the next day too). I think I got a cavity just walking in that place.

That night it was time for the event Matt had been waiting for. He really wanted to go to a Cubs game, but they weren't in town, so we went to the White Sox game instead. See the bottom left picture of Matt glaring at me... it's because I was totally freaking out about riding this subway thing. Once we got on I swore that thing was going to fly off the tracks and we would die underground. Thankfully we made it. The Sox lost.. but it was a fun game. We even had some delicious hotdogs and nachos, dinner of champions right there.

The next day it was up and at 'em again (Matt kept me on a tight schedule) and we headed for the Shedd Aquarium. This was an enormous aquarium with lots of little creatures, big and small. Matt was so into it, as you can tell. I enjoyed it too... in between sitting on the benches and eating my poptarts. The view was beautiful outside the aquarium. In the right picture of the both of us, I know it looks like I have a twin in the water, but no worries.. it's just the whale swimming around.

After the aquarium we headed for some deep dish original Chicago pizza... this stuff is different, but good. We did a lot of yummy eating while we were there and decided to finish our last night with a fabulous meal at the Weber Grill Restaurant... and Weber Grill as in the thing you cook on in your backyard. Sometimes it takes me a minute to connect the dots... and when I finally saw the large grill on the side of the building I understood. We had a wonderful trip for our anniversary and Matt is already planning the next one so we can do everything we didn't get to do.