Ray and Traci’s Adventures in the Windy City
After realizing his work schedule prevented Ray from attending his 15th class reunion in April, Ray decided to plan a trip in May to introduce Traci to his former home during medical school – Chicago!
The voyage had a rocky start early Saturday morning – as soon as our fully loaded Alaska Airlines airplane reached its departure time, the pilot informed us that a key video monitor in the cockpit needed to be replaced. A 20 minute delay turned into 30, and then we were informed we would need to get on a different plane. After departing the first plane and loading the second, we were informed that the new plane needed an exterior part to be replaced. We had to wait on the plane and ended up leaving over 2 hours late. Fortunately our flight to Chicago was uneventful once we were airborne.
When traveling to places like New York or Chicago, arranging a “car service” transportation in advance is often the most economical way to transfer. I used an internet site called 1800limo.com and received a discounted flat rate in advance. Other than a mild delay from looking for the wrong make of car, our transfer to downtown Chicago went smoothly. It was notable that traffic even on a Saturday afternoon was moving slowly, especially leaving the city. Seattle is not the only city with major traffic problems! Our driver brought us to the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the Chicago River, where we checked in having booked a special advance rate using hotels.com. A travel tip – while booking from the hotels site (hyatt.com) usually finds discount room rates, you usually have to pay taxes on top of them (but you do get airline frequent flyer points) – Using hotels.com, expedia.com, or pleasantholidays.com often finds cheap rates with taxes and fees included – but no frequent flyer miles.
After unpacking, we walked over to Navy Pier which is a typical “boardwalk” facility – Food, fun, rides (very limited), and shopping abound. Navy Pier is surprisingly long, has boarding areas for many daytime sight seeing cruises as well as nighttime dinner cruises and boasts one of the largest stained glass museums in the country. Most of the stained glass exhibits came off of churches from long ago, but a few modern exhibits were dispalyed including a Chicago Bulls collage. We also walked by Lake Point Tower which borders Navy Pier – Slamming Sammy Sosa has his huge condo which covers half of an entire floor of the luxury tower for sale (asking $7 million if your interested in making an offer….)
From Navy Pier we walked to the Chicago Nordstrom at Grand and Michigan avenues. Traci noted that the Chicago Nordstrom has the largest womens shoe department – an area that looked even larger when it was basically empty. The interior is very nice – I thought it was interesting that the signage reported the store closed at 8pm (we entered at 7:55pm) but no one announced the store was closing and we wandered around with many other shoppers for at least 30 minutes. After looking around Traci’s favorite store, we walked down Ontario Avenue to get pizza. Gino’s East is one of Chicago’s most celebrated deep dish pizza parlors, and one of the things Ray misses the most after leaving Chicago. On the way we walked past a huge two story McDonald that looked like some sort of space port. Upon arriving at Gino’s East we were pleasantly surprised by the relative short 15 minute wait to get seated. We enjoyed a salad followed by a wonderful Chicago style deep dish pizza with pepperoni, Canadian bacon and sausage. Chicago pizza is a treat not to be missed – other places such as Delfinos in Seattle’s University Village make reasonable facsimiles of Chicago pizza but certainly not as good as the original. We walked backed to the Hyatt stuffed with stuffed pizza and ready to turn in for the evening. One comment about the Hyatt – from our 21st story rooms you can hear the “L” trains rush by underground – light sleepers be warned about staying there!
On Sunday, we started our day by eating at a place called “Corner Bakery.” It turns out that there are several of these downtown – they serve (both dine-in and take out) all sorts of fruits, juices, muffins, sandwiches and salads. Since it was packed we took our food and walked down the street to Chicago’s famed Millenium park. The park was built over a rail yard and is a large expanse of grass, stainless steel fixtures/buildings and a garden. An ice rink which only operates in the winter is currently a fenced in concrete area serving as a dining area for private functions. Much of the grass areas are off limits – and a plethora of security guards riding Segway personal mobility devices patrol the park. A lengthy stainless steel pedestrian bridge designed by Frank Geary spans the East end of the park. Two large obelisks like objects out of the movie 2001 act as fountains (especially popular in the summer) – the two sides which face each other are video light displays and the face of Jerry Seinfeld (or someone who looks awfully like him) smiles, blinks and generally watches you. The park must be an ideal spot for outdoor concerts as a large amphitheatre adorns the middle grassy area. We were told the faces on the obelisk change regularly and water from the fountains is “spit” out thru the mouths.
The next stop after Millenium Park was the much revered Wrigley Park. We hopped on the “L’ and took the 10 minute ride to the home of the Cubs. Fortunately we picked a beautiful May Sunday to attend an afternoon game between the Phillies and Cubs. First, it was amazing to see two teams play so quickly – the whole 8 ½ inning game was done in 2 hours. Second, Wrigley may have history over Safeco field, but in terms of amenities it lags far behind. Even the field looked like a plain lawn compared to Safeco’s carefully engineered and maintained grass (most expensive lawn in the world!). It is funny to see all the “bleachers’ set up on rooftops around the stadium to watch the Cubs without paying the Tribune company (owners of the Cubs.) Some bleachers are quite large and must give enterprising landlords some extra income. For Sunday’s Phillies game most of the bleachers outside the stadium were fairly empty although the stadium itself was sold out. We stopped at a couple of Cubs merchandise stores before riding the “L” back into the city.
After a brief respite, we had reservations for the famous Chicago Chop House to enjoy Midwest steaks. Traci ordered a Filet, Ray had a T-bone. Both were excellent – the tender, high quality meat was very enjoyable although Ray felt his steak lacked the spicy “kick” that made Daniel’s broiler in Seattle his all time favorite steakhouse. We ended the evening with a trip to a combination 24 hour Dunkin Donuts/Baskin & Robbins. While the condition of the store and the poor staffing had much to be desired, ice cream tastes delicious no matter how it’s scooped out of the container.
On Monday, clouds covered the city and news reports cautioned against possible thundershowers. Our planned touring of the city on a double decker bus was put on hold and we decided to tour the shopping areas instead. We headed to Water Tower Place on Chicago’s miracle mile – on our way to the store we wandered around Northwestern’s Chicago campus (where Ray went to medical school) and Ray was astonished with all the changes (tearing down old buildings and replacing them with huge high skyscrapers). His old home at the Northwestern dorm is sadly being closed after this academic year. At Water Tower place, we mainly enjoyed looking at the wide variety of stores displaying overpriced designer goods. Most of the stores were the same names you would find in Bellevue Square. The mall itself is amazingly luxurious – you are greeted with entry escalators separated by running water fountains cascading downward, marble all around, a central open area going from lower floors to top floors with a glass elevator enclosed. We ate lunch at the Grand Lux Café on Michigan Avenue (a very large restaurant found in places like Las Vegas) and wandered around at several other Chicago shopping attractions – Niketown where Ray commented on the extremely inefficient use of floor space, the bloomingdale’s shopping mall across from Water tower with what appeared to be the leftover tenants that couldn’t get into the Water Tower.
After our shopping tour we went to a river cruise recommended by the hotel concierge – we got on this large boat with clouds threatening and wind howling but actually had a great architectural introduction to the city of skyscrapers. Many famous architects were based in Chicago and helped develop the city into the metropolis it is today. Chicago’s history is quite interesting including (like Seattle) a major fire in the 1870s that wiped everything else, severe pollution problems ultimately resulting in the great engineering feat of reversing the flow of the Chicago river and many architectural advancements such as the first steel framed construction allowing high rises. Something interesting that I didn’t quite understand was the huge numbers of buildings with “Condo for sale” signs out front – I don’t think Chicago is undergoing explosive growth like Las Vegas so I’m not sure where all the buyers are coming from. Is traffic so bad they have to sell their homes to move closer to work? We ate dinner at Cosi’s the soup/sandwich/pizza restaurant that recently opened in Seattle. Afterwards, we took a taxi to Second City which is Chicago’s famous comedy troup that’s been around for 45 years and boasts alumni such as John Belushi and Bill Murray. If you’re ever in Chicago, I highly recommend attending the show – the tickets are only $12 (so book on the internet VERY EARLY) and show up early – first to arrive get the best seats. It’s actually a small venue so there aren’t any bad seats. They put on a 2 act show much like Saturday night live with some hilarious well planned skits and others put together on the fly by audience suggestions. It’s a mostly clean show, PG at most and don’t worry, no one in the audience gets humiliated. I actually don’t know why tickets are relatively inexpensive (taxi ride from downtown costs almost as much as the ticket! Parking costs more than the tickets if you drive!) as the show is mostly sold out. They finished the night with a special 3rd act that most of the audience stayed for (it getting very late on a weeknight) that was all improvised. Ray liked the prepared skits the best – some were “roll on the ground and die of laughter funny,” but the improvised ones really showcase their comedy talents. After the 2 ½ hour show Traci stopped into the next door Starbucks (Open 24 hours a day! And was quite busy at 11:30pm on Monday night) before we caught a cab back to the Hyatt.
Tuesday – we awoke to a beautiful, sunny Chicago day which reached 80 degrees. After a breakfast at the corner bakery, we hopped on one of the tour busses. The company we used operated both trolleys and double decker busses. Our first ride was on a trolley with a driver trying to be a tour guide at the same time and basically called out the names of the stores as we passed Michigan avenue giving useless tidbits like “if you want an iPod you can buy them at that Apple store.” We got off at the Sears Tower and bought $12 dollar tickets (you can get 50% off a second admission with the Marshall Field’s coupons found in the tourist brochure racks), to see Chicago from the 103rd floor of the United States’ tallest building (World’s #3) as of 2005. The view was quite spectacular although it would have been nicer if you could actually go outside. We got to take a few pictures, go thru the obligatory gift shops and wait for a bus at the tour stop. Fortunately, the next vehicle to come along was a true double decker bus with a separate guide who was quite funny and informative. We got to see the new Soldiers Field (the Bear’s new stadium is quite an upgrade – you have the columns left over from the old stadium with brand new futuristic looking seating areas.) We passed the Buckingham Fountain which is seen on the opening of Fox’s old TV series “Married with Children.” Our new guide was much better at giving interesting facts like the Sheraton Hotel penthouse was designed by the Secret Service to be the President’s home while visiting Chicago. I was quite impressed with the large park areas complete with ball fields and amenities like amphitheatres in the city – the planning is well done and the areas are very well maintained (maybe we in Seattle could learn something).
We got off the double decker bus at the Water Tower and stopped at Ray’s favorite Ice Cream place – Gharidelli’s (it wasn’t there when he went to school!). Traci and Ray were going to share an ice cream sundae but Ray liked it so much he made Traci mad by eating it all. After not getting any ice cream, Traci got some popcorn at Garrett’s Popcorn (a famous Chicago fixture with lines outside the small shop at times). We continued walking up Michigan avenue to the Jamba Juice across from the Millenium Park. Still having extra time on our hands, we walked to the Hilton Palmer House and looked around the very ornate lobby areas. The Palmer is very elegant, more elegant (we thought) than New York’s famed Plaza Hotel but it’s kind of far away from most of the fun places. We finished out Chicago adventure at the State Street flagship Marshall Field’s store where Traci looked at many handbags, one which she will eventually purchase using her employee discount back at Seattle’s Nordstrom. We walked from Field’s back to the Hyatt to claim our checked baggage. It’s a 5 block walk from Hyatt to the Blue Line L train, one that made us wish we brought wheeled bags for. The L is a convenient way to get to O’Hare – you don’t have to worry about traffic, it’s generally on time, and you can’t beat the $1.75 per person price but you have to lug your bags around. Fortunately our trip back to Seattle was uneventful, thus concluding this latest adventure of Traci and Ray.
