I promised you this post...

Chicago! I finally have the time to discuss all the fun that we had in Chicago! (yes, all boxes are now unpacked - working on getting my sewing area set up, which will take a week in itself to figure out my new organization scheme)

So, as you know, Andrew and I took a slight break in the road trip in spending a few days in Chicago over Labor Day weekend.

We arrived about 5ish Sunday night, and hit traffic. Reminicent of Seattle traffic, but just a bit worse, especially given that we were not on familiar turf (but we were on I-90 if that counts...) Oh, and I should mention that GPS navigation gets totally confused when there are lots of tall buildings around - no workie so wellie in humungous city. Luckily, we still managed to find the hotel and the self-park garage for the hotel. After getting settled into the hotel and thinking, "Thank you Hotwire.com!" Andrew and I met up with Gen and Bobby in the lobby to go walk over and have true Chicago-style stuffed pizza at Giordano's. Let me just say, I will never look at a stuffed pizza the same way again. Boy was that pizza good! It was great to catch up with the two of them, and Gen was really helpful in giving us ideas of things to do while we were there. After dinner, Andrew and I crashed with full tummies on a comfy King bed.

Monday, we slept in and then figured out public transportation to the Field Museum. Putzed around the Museum for a good couple of hours (lots of dinosaur fossils - very impressive to see, especially Sue) and started to want to watch Night at the Museum again. We then went back to the hotel to grab the laptop in hopes of finding free WiFi at B&N cafe (found B&N a couple of blocks away, thanks to the bus), had no luck, but bought Andrew a book anyway. To finish off the evening, we took up one of Gen and Bobby's suggestion of taking the Red Line "L" to the Hancock tower, eat dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, then go up to the observatory. Yes, the Sears tower is the tallest one in Chicago, but Hancock is tall, reportedly cheaper to go up in, and you get to see the Sears tower from the observatory. Best of everything, right? Only downside to that trip was that the elevator talks to you for the 40 seconds your are traveling up or down. But the sights at night were impressive. I only wish we were able to catch it at dusk rather than at night. But on the bright side - less crowded!

Tuesday was the day of the Cubs game! Before the game, we walked over to Millennium Park to see the ampitheater and the bean. For reference, as you walk past Millennium Park, there's this structure that is curvy like the EMP, but not as funkily colored. Still makes you wonder what it is. Up close, the ampitheater is more impressive and has better functionality than the EMP ever had. Unfortunately, the day was too hot for us to feel up to putzing around the park for a long time, so we cowered in the hotel room until we left for the Cubs game.

Now - the Cubs game - Wrigley Field - AMAZING!!! If you want a baseball game, go to a game at Wrigley Field. We went early enough to catch the last hour or so of batting practice. The nice thing is that you can walk all the way down to the field (still within the bleachers) and literally stand just feet away from a ball player. Let's just say that Andrew was feeling like a five-year-old baseball enthusiast school-boy. And our seats for the game were quite good too. It was a packed game, and unfortunatley with the location of the seats, there was no air-flow, so needless to say, it got really warm there. But it was a great ballgame, and definitely not like the games at Safeco Field in Seattle. For one, Wrigley is smaller than Safeco (not a big surprise, Wrigley is a lot older...), but one perk is that there is less going on with the jumbotron, given that there isn't a jumbotron to do anything on. Also, the fans - that really brought in the baseball experience. Everyone there was there for a ballgame (and of course to drink beer). But I haven't seen fans really get into a game like I did there (even back during the glory days of the M's). The stadium was loud and we were up and down in our seats a lot. It was fun. And it was actually a competitive ballgame instead of a blowout. The game went into extra innings, and unfortunately, the Cubs lost it in the 11th.

Pictures of Chicago will be posted on my photo site soon - I am finally working on our desktop machine, but all the pictures are currently on Andrew's laptop (actually, I lie - Wrigely is not downloaded from the camera yet...), and guess who has that computer right now?

Okay, I should probably get back to organizing the sewing area before I head out to join the other ladies from Graduate Christian Fellowship for dinner...