Chicago Day 4

Plan for day 4: Sleep in a bit, make our way to Wrigley Field for the Cubs game, leaving plenty of time to explore the stadium and surrounding areas.  Mother Nature's plan for day 4: torrential rain.  Mother Nature won.  The game was cancelled.  

We were very disappointed of course.  We still got to beat around the area and see the stadium and stuff, but no game, and no chance that we'll be able to go to the game on the rescheduled date.  

So we went to the zoo instead.  Not exactly the best option for such rainy weather but it was free and we like zoos. 

They had a lot of inside exhibits, which made it a lot more pleasant.  That ended up being basically the whole day by the time we got rained out of the game and saw the zoo so we went back to our hotel, got up at really early AM on Saturday, and flew home.  The end of Chicago.

Chicago Day 3

This day turned out to be the best day yet weather-wise.  We started out with a walking tour by the Chicago Architecture foundation called "Historic Downtown South: Rise of the Skyscraper", which we really enjoyed.  We saw lots of cool buildings and some weird ones.  Here's a bit of a really pretty mosaic that was in one of the building lobbies.

After that, we went back to the pier for a ride on a sailing ship called the Tall Ship Windy.  The skyline views from the lake were awesome, but it was really windy out there. 

While we were at the pier, we played a round of mini golf, went to a stained glass windows museum, and rode the ferris wheel again.  This time the weather was much better and it wasn't nearly as horrifying as the day before.  In fact, it was relaxing and fun.  The day was just relaxed and the weather was gorgeous.  I even got sunburned on my nose.

In the evening, it was free at the art institute so we decided to hit that up.  We saw lots of cool stuff from sculptures to paintings.  Here's one you may recognize.

After the art institute, we decided to go out and get some Chicago deep dish pizza.  It was yummy, but we weren't that impressed really.  It was just too much cheese.  I would go for a regular slice of pizza over that any day.  

Finally, we wrapped up the day with some miscellaneous sightseeing at Millennium Park.  We really enjoyed one particular sculpture called "Cloud Gate"-- but Chicagoans call it the silver bean.  It's a really cool reflective, bean-shaped sculpture.  Check it out.

Really fun.  We are in that picture if you look close.  It was really a fun day.  I wish the weather had been like that the whole time.

Chicago Day 2

Day 2 turned out to be a rainy, dreary sort of day.  We made our way into the city on the subway, then ran in the rain to catch a bus so we wouldn't have to walk so far outside.  We rode that bus to the museum campus and started our day at the Field Museum of Natural History.  This was such a fun museum, with tons of displays from the most complete T-Rex skeleton in the world, to a mummy's tomb, to a man-eating lion (dead and stuffed of course).  We could've spent much longer there, but we made our way through in a couple of hours so we could make our way over to the planetarium.  There we saw a typical planetarium show where they project stars onto a big dome roof.  We walked through displays on the solar system, the moon walk, and astronomy tools through history.  Finally, we went on over to the aquarium, which is in the same area as the Field Museum and planetarium.  The big oceanarium where they have the dolphins and stuff was closed for renovations, but we were still able to walk through the rest of it and see awesome sea horses, scary sharks, cute turtles, and a bunch of other sea creatures.

For the evening, we had a architecture tour on the river scheduled, but we didn't think it was going to happen since it had been raining all day and our frequent checks of the internet weather site were saying there was a 70% chance of rain throughout the evening.  Still, when we left the aquarium, the rain had stopped, so we made our way up to the pier in hopes that it might still work out.  We got onto the tour boat with about 4 other people and the boat set off, but we ended up going right back to shore.  It turns out a big school group was booked on that tour and they were running a little behind.  They finally made it, and we set off again.  Z and I were feeling somewhat peeved.  We left on the tour about 15 minutes late, and we were surrounded by a bunch of pre-teen/teenage kids- not always the best audience on a tour.  But we ended up pleasantly surprised.  The kids stayed quiet, the tour was excellent, and there was not more than a few drops of rain for the duration of the tour.  This might have been my favorite part of the trip.  I forgot to mention that between when we picked up our tour tickets and when the tour actually left, we decided to fill up a few minutes by riding the ferris wheel at navy pier.  We thought it'd be tons of fun.  Well, it wasn't really raining anymore, but the wind was still blowing quite a bit, and I was terrified.  We were clear up in the air and our car was blowing like crazy and I really thought I was going to die.  All I wanted to do was get back off. Luckily, we made it back to solid ground a little rattled but alive.  Phew.  So after our architecture tour we made our way back to the hotel again and day 2 came to a close.

I am still too lazy to post pictures so days 3 and 4 and pictures to follow. 

Chicago Day 1

We started out pretty early with a 9-something flight from Philly to Chicago Midway.  The flight was uneventful (thank goodness) and we arrived in Chicago somewhat early.  We made our way through the airport to the orange line train and made our way into the city for the very first time. We had a whole itinerary planned out, so we made our way toward activity one, which was a bus tour of the city.  We were not able to get on the exact tour we wanted, but we got on a tour of the south part of Chicago and off we went.  For the next 2 hours, we sat on a tour bus with a bunch of old people and saw the sights.  We saw the University of Chicago's campus, Lake Michigan (kinda hard to miss in Chicago), lots of different kinds of buildings, Barack Obama's house, the Sprint store (once a Baskin Robbins) where Barack and Michelle Obama first kissed (awwwww), a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and lot more.  It was a blast.  After our bus tour, we made our way over to the Sears Tower (or Willis Building, or whatever they're calling in now), and went up to the observation deck.  The regular deck wasn't open since they are doing some work up there so we went to one that was 4 or so floors below.  After we made it back down to the ground, we decided we just couldn't get enough of great views, so we made our way up to the Hancock building, which also has an observatory.  So great.  Honestly, we liked the Hancock much better.  They had an audio tour included with admission and the views were better.  If you ever go to Chicago and you can only do one of the 2, this is the one to do. That being said, the Sears Tower's regular observation deck was closed because they are building (and are very soon to complete) a glass deck that you can walk out on and look down on the city through the glass.  That could be really cool.  After coming down from Hancock, we walked down the Magnificent Mile, people watched, walked in a few stores, and just enjoyed some of the Chicago sights.  We wrapped up the day by hopping the train to our hotel, which was about 40 minutes outside of the city.  The train ride to the hotel was not bad at all, and we got a real deal on the hotel so we figured it was worth the commute.

More Chicago trip updates and pictures to follow.

Coming up...

Zack will soon finish his last paper of his undergraduate studies then we can 

PARTY!

We're going to kick off our party next Tuesday by flying to Chicago.  I've never been (except for 1 short layover at Midway) and Zack is a lifelong Cubs fan, so it should be a blast.  We have 4 days packed full of plans (including a baseball game).  I am sure I will give a full rundown on here after we get back.

So we fly back into Philly on Saturday morning.  Then we have a few hours to pull ourselves together before Zack's parents fly in that evening. We have 10 days with them, also packed full of excitement.  We'll start out here in Philly for a few days, make our way down to DC for a couple of days, go to Gettysburg, and wrap it all up back here.  They will fly back to Utah on the 25th, and then we have to be out of our apartment by noon on the 27th.

So, even though it's like 3 weeks until we move, it's really only like 4 or 5 days since we'll be partying all the rest.  So, of course, I have started packing.  Zack likes to make fun of me about this.  I like to plan ahead for things.  I pretty much started cleaning out/dejunking/packing my room at my parents' house soon after we got engaged even though we didn't move out here for another 6 months.  I had a lot of free time since Z was living here at that time and I was just working (no school), so I took advantage of the time I had to figure out what I would get rid of, what I would bring, and what I would store at my parents' house until a later date. He gives me a lotta crap about starting so soon, but I wasn't the one who ended up scrambling to pack all my stuff at the last minute (love you honey).  Anyway, so I am packing and I didn't start 6 months in advance.  Just 3 weeks.  And it's really justified this time.

It's all very exciting.  Updates to come.

Birthday

Zack's birthday was yesterday.  We kicked off the celebration on Friday night with a party with some of the peeps here at our little apartment.  We played games, chatted it up, and ate delicious cake.  It was a grand ol' time.  We are grateful for our awesome Philly friends.  The party had a baseball theme since Z loves it oh so much.  Here's the cake.

Yesterday, on his actual birthday, he skipped out on work to spend the day partying with me.  It was a rainy day, which was a bummer and put a damper on some potential excitement, but we still had a delicious brunch at IHOP, indulged in a nap, worked it at the gym, and went out to eat with some friends.  We polished off the day with some ice cream and present opening, and then we unwound by watching some of our favorite tv shows.  Pretty low key, but nice.  I really had a fabulous time.

Again, a shout out to all our fabulous friends.  We have hung out with them in various combinations for several nights in a row now that school things are winding down for some of them and the summer lifestyle is beginning to creep in.  We are loving it.

I won't wax on about how wonderful my husband is (although he is amazing) since I recently wrote the post of 100 things about him, but I will say that I hope you had a good birthday weekend sweetie.  

Symptoms

I am feeling a little congested today and I'm tired. I decided that I ought to do a little self-diagnosis.

http://doihaveswineflu.org/