Lydia is now on the "mod" system at CSW, and between each of the mods there is a break of 3-4 days, usually a long (four-day) weekend. This setup makes it easy to arrange short trips, jaunts, and mini-vacations. After her first mod she did a school-sponsored hiking trip in the White Mountains in NH; this time around I organized a father-daughter trip to Chicago.
We flew out early Thursday morning on Nov 12, then flew back early Sunday morning on the 15th, so we had a few days to explore and take in the sights. Weather was cool/cold but not really freezing, so it was still nice to be outside.
Our hotel was the Chicago Marriott "Magnificent Mile", a big hotel right smack in the so-called "magnificent mile" shopping district that runs north-south along Michigan avenue. Our room was small but serviceable, way up on the 34th floor (big building). Arrived around 12, then grabbed a quick bite at a local sandwich place ("Doc B's") and then spent time walking around the neighborhood, exploring and doing a little shopping.
Photos from our walk around:
This was a cool-looking old building designed to look like a mosque or middle-eastern temple of some sort (complete with onion domes -- bet you won't see too many similar buildings being constructed today). It currently houses a Bloomingdale's store (weird).
From the shop window of the Museum of Contemporary Art -- yes, I most definitely need to own a shiny golden pig sculpture.
Outside the MOCA:
This odd-looking building is actually part of an old water-pumping station. Very important to include turrets and battlements when building pumping stations.
Shopping:
View from the hotel room looking west:
We spent some time relaxing in the hotel room, then headed our around 5:15 to have dinner.
Dinner at Tanta, a Peruvian restaurant. Medium-sized place, very dark, sizable bar with many hip-looking your couples and rather loud disco beat. The food was good but very rich (not much in the "big plate of steamed veggies" dept). The appetizers were quite tasty, including grilled octopus.
After wrapping up there we took the subway a few stops down to South Dearborn street to attend a taping of the NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me", for which I had bought tickets well in advance.
Seeing WWDTM is a slightly odd experience -- you get off the subway and walk over to this enormous bank building, which is mostly locked up (since it is a bank after all, and it's 7pm), but you go in the side entrance and then way down into the basement of the building (sub-basement in fact, sort of bunker-like). The crowd was funny to watch-- I'm not sure how to describe it, but they just looked incredibly nerdy/wonky NPR-ish. Of course we were all clutching our tickets and waiting for someone to carefully check them, but it was all basically on the honor system (there are assigned seats, however). The auditorium was comfy, we had a decent view of the stage and could hear everything just fine. The stage:
Guests were Roxanne Roberts (who looks older in real life), Brian Babylon, and Maz Jobrani (they are very funny guys in the flesh, especially Brian, whose brain works in really bizarre ways, going off on riffs and tangents). The show seemed to be custom-designed just for me -- it had a section featuring questions about giant squid (hah) and a person dialing in from Cleveland TN (he had to explain where it was, of course). We had a good time and got a lot of good laughs in. Subway back afterwards (it is nice to be in a city with good public transport).
On Friday we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant (that actually turned out to be something of a strategic mistake -- possibly the most expensive breakfast I've had in a long time, considering what we ordered), then walked down Michigan Ave to catch an architectural tour.
Weather was chilly and windy -- I was glad that I had worn my sweater and warmest hat (long underwear would have been nice too, but I didn't actually bring any).
For the tour you get onto a boat with a big open deck and chairs lined up on top, then you cruise down the Chicago river while the docent tells you about the various buildings. I enjoyed it thoroughly; hearing about the history of the city and how the architecture evolved was pretty cool. We did wind up going down below to grab a cup of hot chocolate and defrost for a bit partway through, but for most of the tour we stayed up top. Here is a shot of our tour guide:
The sides of the river have just about everything you can imagine -- grim and functional-looking warehouse-like buildings, active construction sites, giant skyscrapers, ritzy-looking townhouses, you name it. Here is a recent addition bearing the Trump label:
Selfie:
This odd-looking building was designed by someone famous -- our tour guide said that the architect "liked triangles":
A townhouse type arrangement:
Interesting looking building:
Cool building designed by Bertrand Goldberg, also the guy who designed the Marina City complex:
Sears tower (now the Ellis building I believe):
View looking back towards downtown from the spot where the river joins up with the lake:
After the tour we decided that we would walk down to the Chicago Art Institute, have lunch in the area, and then take in the museum. We at at "Cosi", a local sandwich place.
Some photos of the giant mirrored coffee bean (the "Cloud Gate") -- a favorite of mine:
The museum was fun. We could have spent all day there-- it is a big collection. The parts we visited included an exhibit on the work of the architect David Adjaye (that was pretty neat), the impressionists section (Monet, Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec and others), some contemporary photography, and the Greek and Roman sections. Entryway:
From the David Adjaye section:
They had a small "Arts and Crafts" section, including some Charles Rennie Mackintosh works:
The Greco-Roman section:
From the impressionists:
After our itinerary through the museum we made our way on foot back up to the hotel and spent a couple of hours relaxing -- at that point we were a bit worn out from all the to-ings and fro-ings.
Lydia and I put our heads together and decided that for dinner we wanted a meal that would be mostly vegetables, so I went down to the hotel lobby and quizzed the concierge to ask for suggestions. His suggestions were not especially helpful, so I went back and resorted to Google for a bit; we finally settled on a local Chinese place, Lao Sze Chuan. It turned out to be a good pick -- the vegetables (stir-fried spinach with garlic, stir-fried pea-pod stems) were superb and perfectly cooked. Yum.
On Saturday morning we had lunch at a local Whole Foods (better food than the hotel restaurant and at about 1/5 the price) and then hung out in in the hotel room for a while. A bit later on in the morning we walked north to the local Barnes and Noble to do some book shopping, then headed back to have a pizza lunch. At 1pm we headed off to do a bicycle tour that I had arranged for us.
We started off not far from the hotel, then biked north through Streeterville (which has a very colorful history), up through the Gold Coast neighborhood, into Old Town, and then east into Lincoln Park, where we stopped at the zoo for a bit. After that we biked back along the shore to the rental place. It was fun, a bit on the slow side (this is my typical complaint about group bike tours), but it was a fine day, nice to be outside.
Chicago skyline from Lincoln Park:
The bikers:
Our bikes had names... ?
More shots from along the shore:
We had good timing on the subway connections and got there around 5pm. The place is in a sort of warehouse-ish district to the west of the main loop (subway goes over the river), not much else there. The other thing about it is that it is quite small -- Lydia's characterization was "shipping container", which is really pretty close to the truth. It's a sort of wood-paneled rectangular room with bench-like tables on one side and the bar/kitchen on the other side, without a lot of room to maneuver.
We had good luck: a table had just opened up when we arrived so we didn't have to wait at all (hah!). Your seating choices are either A) at the bar, or B) communal seating along the bench/table thing. Being only two people was a big help I think.
We ordered four dishes -- Lydia picked a green salad and the market whole roasted fish; I ordered the kale "panzanella" (whatever that is) appetizer and a chicken main. The dishes came one after the other -- they don't try to bring them out at the same time (we shared everything).
The green salad was really nice -- very cool and refreshing. Mild yoghurt-ish dressing, greens, very thinly sliced radishes, potatoes, and fennel, then these little flavorful black bits which I think were sun-cured olives that had been diced and then roasted or toasted in some way.
The kale dish was yummy (one review I read described it as "insanely good"); it had grilled haloumi cheese, some sort of crouton, flecks of spicy red pepper, the kale itself (which was very green and crunchy, almost crispy, not sure what they did to it), and a smattering of onions + some sort pickled raisin (not to sure how to describe it). Super tasty.
The chicken came next; it was a roast half chicken with a sort of riff on fatoush -- crispy bits of bread, frisee, a spicy red pepper sauce, and these sort of spicy cucumbers (or maybe squash, couldn't tell). Also delicious...
The fish came last, it was a whole sea bass that had been roasted and the garnished with a mix of greens (mint, parsley, cilantro), currants, pickled ginger (just like the stuff you get at sushi places) and sauteed onions. It was not quite as awesome as the other dishes but still quite good.
Lydia had a chocolate thing for dessert: it was a sort of rectangular chocolate truffle brick with a ball of cardamom/curry ice cream.
It was a really nice meal, and the prices were extremely reasonable (normally for that sort of food in a big city I would have expected to pay at least twice as much). On the way out the door there was a big line of people waiting, so I think we timed it just right.
We thought for a bit about going out to the movies after that, but we were tired from the biking and the running around, so we decided to "veg out" for the evening.
On Sunday morning we were up early -- took the subway back out to the airport to make our way home. It was a nice trip, I think about the right length and level of "scheduled activity". Lydia remarked on the subway that we had managed to spend the entire trip without ever getting into a car (also kind of cool...).
