Adventures On the Road

Have you ever seen someone get attacked by a bird….for no good reason?  Now, I’m not saying it happened to me, but who would have thought that the little black birds would divebomb someone and peck at their head.

Really, it didn’t happen to me, and I didn’t actually even see it (although I WISH that I had, because how ridiculous would that have looked).  But, it did happen to Nathan.  (Cue hysterical laughter).  Now picture it in your head, Nathan minding his own business, looking up at the ferris wheel at Navy Pier in Chicago, trying to take some cool early morning photos, and WHAM.  Pecked in the head.  (Cue more hysterical laughter).

At least he got some good photos.

We headed out to Chicago for a Tourist Weekend.  This was the first time that I had been in Chicago for pleasure, rather than business, and we definitely took advantage of our weekend there.  Up early, we were in the streets before 7am, which was the perfect time to take some photos of the city (without all of those pesky tourists).

My favourite – the infamous Bean.  It’s just so cool.  It seems like it’s made of one seamless piece of material.  And the reflections it gives off are amazing.

It was the last weekend of Taste of Chicago and we wanted to experience this big outdoor food fair.  I don’t know what we were expecting but it turned into a hot mess of battling crowds of hot, sticky people who were running from booth to booth trying to eat as much as they could.  Because you purchase your food with pre-paid tickets, it doesn’t really feel like you’re spending money.  We went around and tried the polish sausage, a slice of pizza, fire-grilled steak tacos, and mango rice pudding before we had had enough and decided to create our own ‘Taste of Chicago’.

After leaving the craziness of the festival crowds, our eating tour started at Flatwater, a cute little bistro on the river, where we had calamari and salads (mixed greens for Nathan, apple and jicama for me).  For dinner we stumbled upon a steak, seafood and pasta place called Phil Stefani’s 437 Rush. So good.  I’ve never had octopus outside of a sushi restaurant, but we ordered a grilled baby octopus appetizer, and it was so tender and delicious.  For entrees, gnocchi with scallops for me, and chilean seabass for Nathan.  On to dessert at The Melting Pot with ying and yang dark chocolate and white chocolate fondue. (you can find the restaurant info on www.eating4sport.wordpress.com)

Sunday morning we found ourselves eating at a little breakfast nook Vines, just down the street from the Garrett Popcorn Shop, which was filling the air with toffee and caramel popcorn scents.   We ended up wandering around the streets until we got to the John Hancock Building.  Instead of paying to go up to the observation deck, we ended up on the 96th floor, drinking bloody mary’s and looking at Chicago from a different angle.

We finished up our Tourist Weekend at Wrigley Field for a Cubs game.  It was a pretty cool experience – sold out game, kettle corn, stadium beer….unfortunately…the Cubs lost…..horribly.

After the game we headed back to Detroit with full bellies and the feeling that we had conquered another city and made the most out of our 48 hours in Chicago.