Chi Town

Mom and Dad went to Chicago and all I got was this lousy tee shirt!

They got small toys too but the Disney Store on the magnificent mile had shirts and Lew's idea of miniature Willis (sic Sears) Towers seemed over their heads.  So this is where we landed.

We had a wonderful time in Chi Town.  Friday's weather was perfect.  We were a bit delayed getting out of Dallas due to storms but 75 in Chi town with a nice breeze.  We went to the hotel, ate lunch at Gino's East, went to a Cubs game (they lost), had a steak dinner.  The next day I got up and ran 8 miles.  We went to brunch at Wildberry near Millennium Park did the sky deck at the John Hancock building (we will omit that we thought we were walking towards the Sears Tower - google maps would have been useful) and we'll also leave out how many times we got turned around leaving our hotel.  Brunch, shopping, rest at the hotel, dinner at RPM at a friends suggestion (really delicious meatballs) and then drinks in the theater district across from Hamilton!

Hamilton was great.  The performances were excellent.  We saw the understudies of both Anjelica and Eliza and I have to say I hope one of them takes on one of the traveling companies because they were amazing.  Daniel Breaker (Aaron Burr) was fantastic and Miguel Cervantes (Hamilton) has better tone than Lin but he was really true to what it is.  I don't know.  What I'm trying to say is he was great with the material but I think he's a better singer than LMM.  Like Eye of the Hurricane didn't make me cringe in some parts, you know?

On my run at about 7AM.  It was quiet for the most part.

After my run I went and cleaned up, we walked to get coffee, used Yelp to get on the waitlist for Wildberry and then walked to the bean.  Such a weird thing that it's now just "iconic" Chicago because it wasn't here when I was a kid.

The story here was the Vanilla Latte.  So good.

See the helicopter?  On my run that morning there were police officers and a helicopter flying super low over the Michigan Ave Bridge and based on current events my heart skipped a beat and I slowed down.  I kept running (after I waved at the police officers - I have a thing about making eye contact with people that I pass while running) but then about half a mile down Michigan I got stopped and was told they were filming a movie and the road was closed.  So my plan of getting at least a 15k done was thwarted because I just turned and ran back and ended up running by my hotel at 8.2 miles so I just called it.

But the helicopter was so low and did a lot of neat barrel rolls and dives it was crazy.

View from the top of John Hancock which we stupidly thought was Sears Tower.

We got up there and I was like ... oh for the Love we're in the wrong stupid tower.  Still, pretty views.

The river is just beautiful.  On the left hand side there is sidewalk and me and the other runners ran all down it and I ran out to the bay and through millennium park and back down Magnificent Mile until the dumb movie.  It was a great run.

Being silly on the way to the theater.

By this point I was the most excited of all the excited peoples.  For what it's worth all of the patrons were pretty much in the same boat: we're going to be in the room where it happens!

It was a great weekend away.  Apparently Sunday I didn't take many pictures.  After my run and walking 40k steps on Saturday my legs were revolting.  And I was just tired.  We finished up our shopping, had lunch near the river and then made our way to the airport.  I finished the second Cormoran Strike novel (pretty good) and we got home to the kiddos right at bedtime.

It's always nice to get away but coming home is like taking an ice bath.  That first jump in is just shocking.  Almost like the time away is a dream or something.  Lew is back at work the boys are fighting about what show to watch and Julia is crying for reasons unknown.  I missed the kids when we were gone.  Kids were everywhere.  No more kid free trips for the near term though so they'll be with me on the next trip: Boston.

Which is going to be so fun!