The Windy City

John and I are calling this past year our "Big City Tour" year--seems to fit, given our trips to New York and Los Angeles in October and February, and our trip to Chicago 2 weeks ago (plus John is traveling home from D.C. as I type this).  I think New York is still my favorite, although Chicago is a close second.  LA probably deserves a second chance to improve in the rankings, since it surprisingly had the worst weather of all 3 places during our visit!

Anyway, we traveled to Chicago for the American Roentgen Ray Society annual meeting--John submitted an electronic presentation and was invited to give an oral presentation of his topic; I went along as moral support and tour guide.  Nana and Papa took the kids to Blountstown for the week, where they promptly came down with fevers and goopey noses (the kids, not Nana and Papa).

This is another picture- and food-heavy post (a la the NYC trip)--what can I say, we love to eat. :-)

Day 1 (Saturday):

We arrived in Chicago to a hazy sky--check out the waves on Lake Michican:

We walked from our hotel to Millenium Park and admired the blooming Bradford pear trees and the Cloud Gate sculpture:

 

This one is like "Where's Waldo?"...except it's "Where's John and Angie?"

We took the subway out to Wrigleyville and stopped for a snack at Goose Island brewery.  John had one of their beers (I think the Cubby Blue) and I had root beer and some really good popcorn (cooked in duck fat, sprinkled with garlic, pepper, and chives).

Then we went to Wrigley field, where we had reservations for a tour of the stadium.  I am not a Cubs fan (or even a baseball fan), but I do love sports lore and respect passionate fans.  Our tour guide was an older gentleman and lifelong Cubs fan, and he did his job with gusto.  I thought this would be a quick 30 minute tour, but he did a thorough 90-minute tour, complete with lots of fun stories and a round of singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the press box.

Here's a (pretty crummy) pic of John and the stadium:

(PS...Anybody have any good tips on how to convince a husband it takes a few shots, checking camera settings, and patience to get a good photo?)

While we were waiting outside, we had fun reading all the fan bricks.  

(A Wikipedia search revealed that this is not the brick of the person I thought it was...apparently he's George Robert Stephanopoulos.)

The stadium is right in the middle of a residential area:

And it looks like some residents decided to make a little extra money with their rooftops:

John in front of the Cubs' locker room:

Warming the bench:

After the tour, we went back to downtown and walked around a little before heading to dinner.  We found out where all those pricey AMA dues go:

I have been a Rick Bayless fan since medical school--we only had basic cable with 13 channels, so I spent my TV time watching "Mexico: One Plate at a Time" (and "Lidia's Italian Table") on PBS.  So I put Frontera Grill at the top of my list of restaurants to visit. 

This is the start of my truly horrible food photography--just trust me that all the food pictured looked much better in person and tasted great.  I had the tacos al pastor (easily the best taco I have ever eaten--smoky pork with bacon and pineapple on homemade tortillas) and John had chicken enchiladas with mole, and we split dessert--a duo of "flanes."

I can't remember if we did anything after dinner (isn't that sad--this was only 2 weeks ago!).  Ten years ago we would have at least gone to a movie or something, but I'm pretty sure we just rolled our stuffed selves back to the hotel for an early bedtime.  Maybe the kids aren't limiting us that much after all!

Day 2 (Sunday):

We went for a leisurely 8-mile run up Michigan Avenue and then along the lakefront to Lincoln Park.  We took a break at a pretty lily pool (click the link--it's beautiful and we had the whole place to ourselves) in the park, then ran back down the lakefront and then out to Navy Pier.  The only photographic evidence of this run is on John's phone, so I'll have to add those pics later.  We rewarded ourselves with breakfast at Fox and Obel, a yummy gourmet shop and cafe.

We walked back to the hotel, looking and smelling pretty rough, when it occurred to me that there might be other people we knew at the hotel for the convention.  And just at that moment, we ran into two of our classmates from medical school and their cute baby girl.  We were nice enough not to try to hug them. :-)

Before our trip, John solicited restaurant recommendations from one of his mentors at UF.  He gave us several good ideas, one of which was Graham Elliott's restaurant.  We couldn't fit that one in, but I found out Graham Elliott had a new sandwich place called grahamwich, so we stopped by there for lunch.  John had the wagyu beef sandwich--sooo good--and I chose the pork bbq sandwich.  It was listed as pork belly with slaw and cornbread; silly me, I thought it was served with some type of cornbread as the bun.  I was wrong:

Yep, that's a slice of cornbread inside the sandwich.  It was a bit of a heavy lunch for me (thank goodness for that long morning run!).

After lunch, we took the green line on the subway all the way to it's termination in Oak Park.  Our destination in Oak Park was the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio.

Here's a photo of the exterior--not exactly Prairie Style, right?

Apparently he developed his signature style of architecture while living in this house (around 1908-1910).  We took a tour of the interior of his house and studio, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to photograph the interior, and I haven't been able to find many photos of the interior on the internet to share.  It is beautiful, though, and my favorite room is the children's playroom.  It has beautiful windows with lowered window seats (everything is built on a child's scale) and a fun balcony for play-perfomances.  The detail he put into that room warmed me up towards the guy a little bit--while I admire his architectural style, I am not a fan of the fact that he left his wife and 6 kids in this house and ran off to Europe with the wife of one of his clients!

We only took the home/studio tour, but you can also take a walking tour of the surrounding neighborhood.  The surrounding homes mostly date to the early 20th century, and Wright designed around 30 or so homes in the nearby area.  They are privately owned, but you can still admire them from the street, and it is amazing how modern they look today (considering they are around 100 years old).

John and I had no tour guide, so we just walked around and tried to guess which ones were designed by Wright.  This one was easy:

This one has a lot of Victorian elements, but those windows in the front look suspiciously Prairie Style:

This also gave me more time to admire the blooming trees (and I think that's some forsythia?):

Oak Park also has a charming shopping district, so we spent some time browsing before catching the subway back to the city.

We had big plans for dinner and no reservations, so we arrived at the Girl and the Goat just before 6 pm. If you are a fan of Top Chef, you might like this--this is the restaurant of Stephanie Izard, who won season 4.  There were no reservations available until June and even at 6 pm we were given a 1.5 hour wait time.  However, they have a comfy waiting area with couches and tables, so we did what everybody else in the area did--ordered our food and ate it right there!

I thought this restaurant might be a bit adventurous for us, but it ended up being our favorite meal of the trip.  It's a tapas-style restaurant, so we got to sample several things, and eating in close proximity to our neighbors let us scope out some of the dishes before we ordered.  We started with wood-fired oysters with artichoke and horseradish aioli:

Then we feasted on shisito peppers with a creamy sesame sauce, chickpea fritters, and a really, really good pan-seared halibut:

I wanted to try the bitter chocolate brownie with shitake mushroom ice cream for dessert but John thought that sounded a little too much like a failed Top Chef experiment, so we had the rhubarb shortcake and it was delicious.  (The recipe is at this link.)  Just for the sake of my memory, we also had a really good beer there (Cain and Ebel by Two Brothers brewery).

There were a lot more ambitious choices on the menu (anybody up for eating some pig face?), but there are plenty of non-threatening plates for more cautious eaters (us!) and I think it is definitely worth visiting--we'll go back if we return to Chicago.

Day 3 (Monday):

Monday was a conference day for John, so I took the subway to Armitage Avenue and went shopping.

I picked up some Mother's Day treats for Nana and Grandma, and, I think, did John a favor by buying my own Mother's Day present (necklace, earrings, and flats from Francesca's).  Too funny--Big Mama frequently links to Francesca's on her Friday Fashion posts, so I thought it was some kind of big city chain and was so excited to shop there in Chicago (it's like a cheap version of Anthropologie).  Lo and behold, on our trip back from Blountstown, I discovered the Oaks Mall in Gainesville now has a Francesca's!  Just another reason to visit G-ville. :-)

Melanie (my friend from medical school and another radiologist) arrived in town for the convention, so we all went to lunch at Giordano's for Chicago deep-dish, and then went to the Art Institute.  We did the one-hour highlights tour suggested in the museum brochure.  Our favorites were "American Gothic," of course:

and Chagall's America Windows, which I didn't photograph so you'll have to click the link. :-)

John went out to dinner with some of his buddies from medical school (all boys!), so I did a little Michigan Avenue window-shopping.  I fell asleep around 10ish and awakened to John telling me that Osama bin Laden was dead.  In my half-awake state, I thought that he said Obama had been killed but then realized what he was saying.  We spent the next hour watching news coverage (and kinda wishing we were safe in small-town Florida instead of relatively big-city big-target Chicago!).

Day 4 (Tuesday):

This was another conference day for John, so I tried out the hotel gym and then took a long walk to find a local yarn shop.

On my way past Millenium Park, I looked left and realized that this is probably the view the artist intended us to admire of the sculpture--check out the reflection of the skyline:

If you ask me what I will remember most about Chicago, I will say the flowers.  It is really a pretty city--wide streets, clean sidewalks, and beautiful planters full of flowers.  I loved all the tulips:

Even the medians were beautiful:

Such beautiful blooms!  I wonder who takes care of them?

I ran across a few unusual sights...a "Pet Comfort" station in a mall:

And several trees advertising their benefits:

One of my favorite Chicago discoveries was Argo Tea; I stopped in their Armitage location on Monday because I was freezing and wanted coffee, but switched my order to an Earl Grey Vanilla Creme tea after perusing the menu.  It was so good that I stopped at another location on Tuesday for the same drink:

I was wondering if it was a common chain I'd never heard of, but their website says their locations are limited to Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.

My ultimate destination on this walk was Loopy Yarns.  They had a great yarn selection, and I had a fun hour of browsing (and left with some lovely lace-weight yarn).  I had hoped to make it to the Needle Shop for some fabric-shopping, too, but ran out of time (next trip!).

I met John at XOCO, another Rick Bayless restaurant, for lunch.  XOCO serves tortas and caldos (sandwiches and soups); I had the carnitas caldos--pork with cornmeal-potato dumplings, chayote, and arugula.  It was a perfect meal for the 50-degree weather.  The restaurant also serves hot chocolate from cacao beans that are roasted and ground on-site, so we tried the Aztec cocoa and a churro for dessert.

We met up with Melanie and strolled along Michigan Avenue.  We passed the Disney Store and this plaque, which resonated with me given all the uproar over bin Laden's death and concerns about al Quaeda retaliation (click on it to enlarge):

Can't we all just get along?  Maybe that is a Disney-esque view of the world.

We ended up at the John Hancock Observatory and enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the city:

I saw that lighthouse from the ground during our Sunday run (see that speck at the end of the barrier wall?), and from that vantage point it looked like it might connect to the pier, so I told John we should run out to it:

So apparently that's technically not possible. Oh, well.

Our last night was spent eating Thai food at Star of Siam with Melanie and Zofia (my classmates) and a contingency of Wake Forest radiologists that John knew from our year up there.  Afterwards, we actually did a little late-night partying (geeky physician-style) with a few games of bowling at Lucky Strike.  I am apparently a much, much worse bowler than I remember being as an adolescent; I really miss those bumpers.

Day 5 (Tueday):

Home again, home again!

So I loooved Chicago and would love to go back (although not in winter--pretty sure I couldn't handle snow and wind chill).  Also, I do think it's a little less pricey than the other cities we visited--John and I both noticed our meals at Frontera and Girl and Goat were basically equivalent pricewise to a meal at Stonewood or Outback locally.  And we didn't even make it to several places on our list.  Next visit, we will probably include the kids and go to the Field Museum (which has a great T-Rex skeleton), the Adler  Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Museum of Science and Industry.  And I'd love to tack on the Robie House (more Frank Lloyd Wright) and maybe a musical...oh, and maybe a Cubs game. ;-)