CHICAGO

We're back! We spent the weekend in Chicago. It was super cold. Here are the highlights. We arrived on Friday and enjoyed a quiet dinner at Rock Bottom, which ended up being a chain...with awesome beer! Saturday we took the train to Bucktown where I got a haircut from a stylist that I found in the Allure magazine I was reading on the plane! I’ll be getting that haircut corrected on Tuesday by my regular stylist in town. As it turns out, I’m not as stylish and edgy as most people think I should be. I need to communicate that I’m more of a Helen Mirren than a Posh Spice.

As it turned out, we forgot to pack our digital camera. We had to buy some disposable cameras. Remember film? You have to get it developed, and you can’t see the photo you just took until after it’s been developed. That’s a mistake I won’t be making again! So we got our camera just in time to visit the John Hancock building. We waited in line for about ten minutes and took a 40-second elevator ride to the 96th floor to the Signature Lounge. We arrived just on time. The sun was devouring us as we were seated at the bar. We enjoyed a glass of wine and baked brie with apricot jam. The view was spectacular. We finished just in time to watch the sun set. We didn’t really want to leave, but the pressure was on, as the line of people waiting to be seated was lengthy and growing by the minute.

We got up on Sunday to a milder day, with temperatures in the 50s. The UntouchablesTour was something that I wanted to do since we booked the trip. We were picked up by two gangsters in a brown school bus in front of Rock n Roll McDonalds. They were very sweet to the ladies, handing us each a red rose as a souvenir, and they charmingly referred to us as dolls. They took us through 12 sights in 7 neighborhoods, giving us the lowdown on all the “players” and even played a soundtrack that included music from the era and gunfire from a tommy gun. They trained us to duck quickly when we heard gunshots and made fun of us if we missed our cue. It was quite amusing. At the end of the tour, they raffled off some items, one of which Chris won!

After the gangster tour, we headed up to Lincoln Park and Old Town. We grabbed lunch at O'Brien's (or something Irish) and enjoyed a Reuben and a beer, then met up with Chris’ friend Melanie and watched a little comedy at the Second City. They didn’t allow cameras inside, but it was pretty darn cool. Afterward, we headed across the street to Corcoran’s and enjoyed a few more beers and caught up with Melanie. It was a hoot!

Monday was lame...cold, windy, and rainy. We ordered Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story on pay-per-view and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was the best salmon I've had in a long while, and best of all, they let me take my wine up to the room! We watched Medium and drifted off to slumber.

Tuesday morning it was time to head out of town. In the airport, we grabbed a bite at a Manny's. Chris ordered a Reuben, which turned out to be a meat salad nestled between two pieces of rye. I ate an "Ultimate Grill Cheese" which included a healthy dose of BACON! (Yeah, Juliet!) Our flight back home took off just fine, but we got to the Atlanta area just in time for a severe thunder storm, so we were diverted to Birmingham, Alabama to refuel, which seemed to take an eternity. It actually took up our entire three-hour layover. We just barely made it back to ATL, with minutes remaining until our next flight, and breathless, we arrived at our gate…just in time to be delayed again. We landed in Williamsburg two hours late, and just in time for a tornado watch. There’s nothing like sitting in a plane that’s trying to land in strong winds, but I’ll stomach almost anything as long as I’m in my own bed tonight because there’s no place like home.


John Hancock Building


96th floor view of downtown Chicago


Sunset from the Signature Lounge


The Untouchables Tour


Our tour guides


The Biograph Theater - where John Dillinger was shot


Chris won the raffle for the Chicago Gang Wars book!