CHI -TOWN

For the long weekend Kenny and I planned a little getaway to Chicago for our annual summer trip. We had the best time. Neither of us had been before and we made sure to pack EVERYTHING in! We stayed downtown in the perfect location where pretty much everything we wanted to do was in walking distance, a short train ride or an extremely inexpensive cab ride which we took a few of those to! It was hot!

On Saturday we of course had to pay our respects to the hallowed ground of Wrigley Field. The stadium really is amazing and we got so lucky in that our great seats were in the shady part of the stadium by the 3rd inning. Once we were in the shade I was ready to chow down on a Chicago Style hot dog! Yum!! The game was really exciting and the Cubs won!




After the game Kenny had mentioned wanting to go buy the famous Billy Goat Tavern, site of the famous Belushi skits...you know Cheezeborger! Cheezeborger! Cheezeborger! We finally found it tucked under the Tribune building and we couldn't leave without having one of the famed Cheezeborgers.


On Sunday, it was my turn to have chosen the activity so we went to see Billy Elliot at the Ford Oriental Theatre. OMG this show was sooooo amazing! And oh my lord the dancing! This play had so many talented kids. It totally made me want to have a stage kid! The show was different than what I expected but sometimes having no expectations means you enjoy it so much more, The only tickets we were able to buy were literally in the front row. I had never sat this close before and it was a new experience. We could smell things they were cooking on stage as props and smell their cigarettes. And I am not sure if I was just being emotional or it was seeing the actor's faces so close up but I cried a GOOD bit through this production. We will go see it again when it hopefully comes to Memphis!


After the play we walked around Millennium Park.






It started to get kind of cloudy and started to rain so we ducked into a Jamba Juice. Just had to include this picture because Kenny waited in line for like a hour for these smoothies with a bunch of tweens. By the time he finally got them it had stopped raining.
On Monday we did a lot of touristy stuff. We took an Architecture Boat Tour which really was interesting and a lot of fun.




And we went to the John Hancock observatory and walked around a good bit.


Can anyone guess why we took this picture? Kenny was so mad we missed them by a week. Here's a hint. It is not Julio Inglesias!

For lunch we had to make our tourist checklist complete with Chicago Deep Dish Pizza. So we headed to Gino's East right off the Magnificent Mile. Have to say it was indeed worth the wait.

Here we are waiting on our pizza. The first thing the waitress told us was it was like a hour wait for a deep dish. But we were determined. And by the way I do actually have clothes on in these pictures. It was a strapless dress. Woops.


After we were stuffed from lunch we did some shopping on the Magnificent Mile. I was a little wiped out with it being the last day and all the go go going. So we actually went back to the hotel and took a two hour nap before going to The Custom House for our "anniversary dinner." The food was delicious and they couldn't have been nicer in helping us celebrate the occasion!

So we are home now and I am trying to recover. We did so much and stayed so busy. Loved Chicago and hope to go back someday. Looking forward to this very short week and then a laid back weekend.