Date Friday

On Good Friday Nick and I took a date day to downtown Chicago. We've lived here for 2 years now and I have yet to get a good look at downtown. This is somewhat surprising to Nick since he commutes there daily for work, but a sight-seeing day is a bit hard to plan with little ones these days. And since I work in an office in our home, I am surrounded day in and day out by the suburbs. At times I want to be back in an office building, but if my option was working in downtown, I think I'd rather not. The fact that I hate snow and rain mixed with cold temperatures makes this decision quite simple since I would dread walking in the crap day in and day out...all to get to a cube farm - staying at home and working with the back door open on pretty days is a much better option.

We dropped the kids off at daycare and parked at the nearest train station and cruised into Union Station in about 40 minutes. I was like a little kid on the train because I never get to use it. This too was odd to Nick since he and the other 'suits' use it daily to get to work. Nick learned quick that when you use the trains, you have to be sure you're on the correct side of the tracks for the direction you want to go since the doors only open on one side of the train. He learned this lesson on his first commute to work when he was at the train station and it stopped, the doors on his side never opened, and then the train started moving again!

So here we are at the lovely Glenview train stop. It really is quite nice that they give you a good shelter for when the weather is dreadful, which happens quite a bit around here between October and May! Early in the day, Nick realized I was going to fit the mold of a true tourist since I made him take pictures of me at the train. He also titled my big adventure day as 'Where's Waldo in Chicago' due to my choice of sweater.


Once we stopped at Union Station, Nick took me to the great hall....this is where Amtrack passengers wait for trains or homeless people take a cat nap. This place was gigantic. I know there have been movies filmed here - but I can't remember which ones. I thought maybe Ferris Beuller, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, it had a similar hustle and bustle of an airport terminal and made me want to take a trip by train one day. There were even baggage claims just like in airport terminals, which makes sense, but I guess I had just never thought about it before, so I found it amusing!



Once out of Union Station, we headed into the shuffle of Chi Town. Right from the start, we witness a cabbie in distress. His passenger was chewing him up one side and down the other. It was a great spectacle so I of course had to get a picture. Nick wasn't as embarrassed as I thought he would be. I pretended to be taking pictures all around, but I had to eventually aim it right at them to get a good shot. It set a downtown feeling for the rest of the day! It was 9am and I think both these guys were going to be pissed for hours.
The picture below is the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower. It hurts your neck to stand underneath and look all the way to the top. It makes me wonder if the story is true that if you spit from that far up, it could split someones skull by the time it made it to the ground. I doubt this is true, but interesting to think about.

Nick's building is on the corner of Madison and LaSalle and is another structure that makes your head spin when you look all the way up. His office is through the third window from the right, 22 stories up, can you see it?

We walked through the city with a destination of Michigan Ave. This is the hot spot for shopping and we were ready. Along the way, we stopped to see several landmarks. This city is beautiful! I took the pictures of the Marshal Fields building (now Macy's) because it reminds me of stories my Grammy used to tell me about of her as a kid. They lived in Ohio and she remembers a couple of special trips to the city. She said they would always come up from the train onto the streets in front of Marshal Fields.Here are a few theaters we passed. Yes, that does say that Billy Elliot is playing - I love everything about this movie and would love to see it on stage, but there is no way on this earth that Nick would ever even consider going so I'm probably out of luck!We made it to Michigan Ave and did a lot more window shopping than actual shopping. I recently washed my iPod Shuffle so we went in search of a new one in the Apple store. It just didn't seem practical to buy one since I hate the headphones that it comes with and the new shuffle only has controls on the headphone cords. So, if you want to buy new headphones, they have to have these stupid buttons on them which means they're expensive! Nick convinced me this was not a good decision and when we left the store, I felt as if my Dad had just told me I couldn't get a pony. However, it turns out this man is sensible b/c we found an MP3 player at Target by Phillips that I just love. It plays my music and the radio and has a clip and the headphones I can run with...all for a fraction of the price and only $45. The only other store we went in was the Disney store and ended up helping the Easter Bunny find a few things for his Easter Baskets. Yes, we are classy folk and go to Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago for Tinkerbell pajamas!
This is the Realtor building that we took to show Grandpa Lane, the best Realtor around. Nick told me some stat about the Realtor group being the 2nd largest lobby behind beer people. This is definitely not the lingo he used, but regardless, the group of people is huge, and powerful!

We walked by the WGN building and noticed they have random pieces of stone and rocks within the walls from places all over the world. And look at which one was just at my eye level. Ah, a little piece of home, I'll take all I can get!So, for the main purpose of this trip, lunch at Frontera. For those of you who are also Top Chef lovers, you may have watched Top Chef Masters last season and known that Rick Bayless won. He has 3 restuarants in Chicago and they're all on the same corner...Frontera Grill, Topolobamp and Frontera Fresco. It's real 'Mexican' food - this guy was an archeaologist and fell in love with Mexico's cuisine and became a chef, and a good one. The place opened at 11:30 so Nick and I made our way through town and showed up around 11:15. If you go to his website, http://www.fronterakitchens.com, the Frontera products he sells have this fun logo with lots of color and pizazz. When we got to the storefront, I was a bit shocked at how modest the signs were. Just goes to show how this place doesn't need a fancy sign to get customers, word of mouth works just fine for Mr. Bayless. Once the doors opened at 11:30, there was a line around the building! The inside decor was awesome and worth a visit for anyone that lives here or just passing through. The food and margaritas were excellent.
We also made a trip into Whole Foods and the Olgilve Transportation Fresh Market. We ended the day with another train ride home together. It was a great day that I'll remember forever!