Chicago Roadtrip

Ok it’s really late and I’m really tired. As I thought I wouldn’t be able to post any pictures today. I’m really very sorry for that.

Anyway a quick update before I go to sleep. At around 8:30pm we find the building. It’s amazing it’s the tallest building, but once you are walking around between all those highrises in the city, you can’t see it. So the elevator takes you up to the 103rd floor in a minute. During the time you go up, they show you on a flat screen the level you are on and what other landmarks are that high. Then you step out and go to the left and the only thing you can really say is: WOW! It was absolutely stunning to see that nightview of all the lights and the city. I took pictures, but they don’t even come close to that view. You can walk around and you get to see downtown. All the other skyscrapers are smaller as you are so high up. You have to see it with your own eyes to understand what I’m talking about.

The coolest thing though is they took 3 original windows out and built decks out of plexiglass or something like it. Those put you around 4 feet outside of the building. It’s completely see through so you get to see a complete straight-down view. I was watching people go out there and they were all scared. I thought to myself ok it can’t be that bad. I took the video camera and basically filmed myself as I stepped outside the building on the 103rd floor. I was looking through that small LCD screen and I didn’t think it was bad. Then I moved my eyes away from that screen and looked down and that’s when I felt it. Oh my! My knees felt like pudding. It’s a very strange feeling. You know you are safe, but it’s something you have never experienced as you usually can’t step outside of building and see the side of the building go down 103 floors (around 1,300+ feet or 400+ meters high). It’s like you are floating in the middle of the air. That’s something I definitely had to get used to. It was totally amazing. I really enjoyed it.

Then we walked to dinner and we decided to go to the Park Grill for dinner. We arrived like around 10pm there. They were seating people till 10:15pm. So we barely made it. Wow that dinner was so hilarious. I don’t know how it all happened, but I don’t recall the last time I laughed so much at dinner. Everyone I think had an incredible time and that’s all it matters. I didn’t get back to the hotel until around 12:30am.

Today’s plan is to go to the Magnificient Mile. It’s basically a shopping mile. Kisha and Daniel will have to leave today so I won’t have to spend too much time in the shopping mile. Hopefully she won’t drag me into a shoe store. Women and shoes. Oh no! :-)

I’m hoping I’ll be back at the hotel in the afternoon as I have some serious catch-up with work to do and I have some pictures to post to. Usually the 1st creates extra work. But I’m planning to go back to the Italian Restaurant I went to on the first night. Can’t leave the city without going there again. :-)

I still want to see the Museum of Science and Industry. Everything about it sounds like I will totally love. I want to see the Hubble and Ultimate Wave of Tahiti movies. The submarine also really interests me. The exhibit: YOU which is supposed to show the connection between mind, body and spirit.

I’m planning to leave Chicago on Tuesday.  Who knows what will happen after that. :-)

It has been an amazing day so far. I’m like on information overload. Saw so many things. The aquarium had an enormous varity of marine life. Now relaxing and having an ice tea at Starbucks. Had to make sure they won’t arrest me for violating THE LAW! :-) Waiting for the two guys to show up to go up to the Skydeck. If I remember correctly it’ll be on the 103rd floor. The elevator ride will take a minute. Ok gotta go now.

Sorry everyone that I have been so quiet today. :-) Time simply flies when you are having a good time. Finally I got some sleep. After I woke up at 9am, I had to work and get ready. Kisha and I left at around 11:30am. By that time I was really starving. I didn’t have anything to eat or drink yet. First order of business was to find a place to get something to eat. We decided on Park Grill on Michigan Ave. We took a cab to the general area and then walked around. We had to go through Millennium Park. The park is really impressive. There are several huge pieces of art on display. The most incredible one is the Gloud Gate. Locals call it “The Bean” (the artist doesn’t like that name). Another one I really liked were the two towers with waterfalls. On one side it had a huge LED screen and it showed faces on there. The eyelids even blinked. Sometimes water sprayed out of the their mouth. Really cool. The official name is “The Crown Fountain”. As you can probably guess from the name, the park was supposed to open in 2000. But it didn’t until 2004. The original budget was $150 million. In the end it cost $475 million. Someone was really off on that budget. :-)

Found the restaurant and had lunch which was perfect. Then we started to decide to go looking for the Segway Tour place. I now understand why Chicago has the nickname: “The Windy City”. Oh my the wind. You can’t believe how windy it was. Imagine like driving the speed limit on a freeway and then take your whole body outside. That’s pretty much how it felt. Anyway we arrive about 30 minutes early. Our tour guide tells us that there is some coffee shop in the area. So we go looking for it. Couldn’t find it. We asked some guy who passed us with his headphones on, if there is a coffee shop around here? His answer was No and he kept on going. We continue to look around and there we see the coffee shop. It was called Rom and it said: Modern Italian Coffee Bar. I had a Caffe Freddo (basically a cold latte) and some chocolate Gelato. That Gelato was so delicious.

After that we go back and had to watch a safety video. All the Segways had names. Mine was called Big Wes. Kisha’s The Fridge. The tour guide was an amazing character. He was so funny. He said: We arrived at 7am so we can get on first on our Segways in the group . Some people in the group actually believed the joke.  There I was on a Segway for the first time in my life. It’s a strange feeling in the beginning. To move them forward or back you only shift your weight a little bit by leaning. But only like a 1 cm or so. You can hardly see it. It didn’t take long and we were racing around gigantic planters. The guide was still getting everyone else on those machines. He saw us and we got yelled at. :-) Don’t do that yet. Only go a few feet and then stop and keep on doing that. Come on that maneuver was really boring after 30 seconds. The planter race was more fun. :-)

The group was a lot of fun too. Everyone was in a great mood. There were some good laughs. Can’t really tell them. You had to be there. Saw so many things. The only problem at some points was the wind. It kept pushing you around and if you lean only a little forward, it starts moving. So you constantly had to balance back and forth in order to stay in one spot as the wind kept pushing you around. Kisha is like a tower. She is so incredibly tall. I look so tiny in the picture. It’s so funny. It reminds me of 4th grade in school. I was Ali Baba in the play “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves”. I remember “my wife” was also so tall back then.

On the way back, there was an almost crash situation. You had to go up a long bridge/ramp to get onto the second level. Everyone was going up in a single file. The group went up in a pretty good speed. The speed limit was set to 10mph. Kisha was behind me. I had a woman in front of me. In front of that woman was a smaller woman. All of a sudden a huge gust comes through from the front. That gust pushed the small woman back so the Segway went into a quick stop. The woman in front of me really had to stop quickly too. I saw this and I had to swerve very quickly to the left in order not to run into them. Kisha behind me didn’t know what was going on. It must have looked funny. Sudden stops and people swerving around. It provided some good laughs though.

It was a 3 hour tour and my feet started to hurt from all this standing around in one spot the whole time. After that we walked over to the Navy Pier. That’s where Eric and Daniel later joined us for dinner. The dinner didn’t compare to the one on Thursday.

Kisha has some good humor and we both had an amazing day (can’t imagine looking at pens was that much fun LOL). Tomorrow our plan is to go to the Shedd Aquarium and The Field Museum. At that museum you have to see Sue (a giant T.Rex). We also hope to go up to the Skydeck in the Sears Tower (now called Willis Tower). I have a full day. I’m not sure if I’ll make it to post pictures. If I don’t, please accept my apologies. :-)

Wow what a day! Chicago’s skyline is amazing! My feet are hurting. The Segway tour was incredible. I had such a great time. More later and some pictures. The weather couldn’t be better. Sunshine and no rain, nice temperature. It’s raining now, but that’s ok.

Have to do some work now.

For some reason I’m not tired at all today and I got up so early. Maybe it was the Limoncello I had at the Italian restaurant.

Wow what an amazing experience that was. The food was beyond delicious! I’m going to try to write out the details as it was quite some magic on how it worked itself out. On the way to Chicago Kisha was texting back and forth with restaurants we could go to according to the tour book. In the end there were two Italian ones left. A Mano and Spacca Napoli. I read both descriptions. I couldn’t really decide. The description for Spacca was all about pies. First I thought this sounds like a pizza place, but the description threw me off as I thought it’s dessert pies. Especially as I had one the night before and I didn’t much care for it. So I said: I don’t really want to eat pies for dinner. :-) Then Eric told me no it’s pizza. They are trying to be cute there. :-) Oh I get it! I didn’t know that as English isn’t my first language. Then a minute later the Dean Martin song That’s Amore starts playing in the car. In that song the words pizza pie are used. I’ve heard the song so often, but I guess it never registered. Then I knew ok that’s the place we all have to go. It couldn’t be more obvious. Decision was made. At the Hotel in Chicago and ready to leave around 8:15pm. Find out that restaurant is only open till 9pm. Guess what: The other one A Mano: Out of business. Who knew? Spacca wasn’t really close. About a 15 minute car ride and you never know how traffic is going to be. It looked like we were going to make it in time, but the closer we got, the stranger it got. No one believed that there is going to be a restaurant in that area. It got more and more residential. GPS said like in 200 meters you are at your destination. Couldn’t quite believe there would be a restaurant soon. Only saw an overpass for trains. Go under it and out of nowhere, the whole scenery changed and there were restaurants. It was the very first one. Wow! The restaurant was quite crowded. It looked like that mostly locals knew that place. We still got a table. Had Antipasto Misto and Prosciutto e Bufala as appetizers. It tasted so good. Totally authentic. I had an Orange Italian Soda to drink. After that the pizzas came. I had the Pizza Funghi. My mouth still waters if I only think about it. It was so good. For dessert I had Tiramisu and only one Limoncello. :) It tasted out of this world. Then I don’t know why, something incredible happens. Some guy who works there dressed all in white asks if we want some Italian Champagne. I forgot the name. He poured it into four tiny cute looking beer glasses. It was on the house. I asked if he is the Chef. He said no he is the dough boy.  I simply felt like I had to return the favor and congratulate him on the amazing dough for the pizzas. I asked how in the world are you getting the dough so thin? I think he really enjoyed that. Didn’t I say earlier: Somehow things always work themselves out? I’m always absolutely amazed on how these little seemingly meaningless things really tell you something more, if you understand it. I was so grateful for that experience. I loved it. Everyone had a great time. I hope I’m not making anyone hungry here. :-) I probably could go back to this place every day. Oh that restaurant even has a nice website: http://spaccanapolipizzeria.com I just read the “Our Story” on their website. How cute the place opened on Valentine’s Day of 2006.

Ok, that’s it for now. It’s already today so I’m hoping there won’t be any new hotel adventures in the night or morning and that I can simply sleep.

Today I will be taking a Segway City Tour. I think this will be fun. I have never been on one of those things. So if you don’t hear anything from me anymore, well that means I crashed it. Ha Ha Ha.

I also realized, I didn’t go to any Starbucks. That’s not good. Now the Starbucks police is going to look for me and arrest me. LOL

Enjoy the pictures from today!

Yeah! Made it to Chicago! Now at the destination of this journey. There was lots of traffic coming into Chicago. It’s quite interesting when you have been in all these rather small towns over the last few days and then you finally hit the 3rd largest city in the US. Quite a contrast.

Anyway going to freshen up now and then going out to dinner. Found an Italian place which is supposed to have a brick wood-fired oven according to the tour book. Those are usually the best tasting pizzas. Everyone seems to be fine with that choice. Who knows what will happen after that.