My kind of town...

'bout a month ago, the family and I took a quick little jaunt west to Chicago for a weekend.

It was a gorgeous weekend, crisp autumn air, pretty lights along Michigan Avenue, nice breeze off of Lake Michigan, and I got to see Katydid as a special bonus.

Here's how things shook down.

The husband got a great deal on a really cool hotel on Priceline. Check out The Avenue. We only paid $90 a night and we were 1/2 a block from Michigan Avenue - right around the corner from the Nike store. It was a tall hotel - forty floors with a pool on the roof. The kids were fascinated with the whole 40 floors thing.



First night, we had pizza at Gino's East. It was the first Chicago style pizza for the other three and they were very impressed. The whole drive up, I kept telling everyone not to eat, to save the hunger for the pizza...they didn't believe me. And then, it came. We weren't able to finish it, but what we did eat, we enjoyed.



Next morning, we grabbed a cab and went to The Shedd Aquarium - another favorite of mine. I've been three or four times, so I was very excited to show the kids the oceanarium and the show. The show has changed since I've seen it last (10 years ago, go figure) and now it's even cooler than ever. The show at the oceanarium features dolphins, belugas, sea lions, red tail hawks and penguins. The sea lion came right up to our seats, as did the hawk. The oldest has always been fascinated with hawks, so having one an arms' length away was a pretty big deal for him - even as a jaded 13 year old. When he was little, he loved the zoo. We went once a week. He was a zoo overnight camper, went to zoo class for at least a week each summer and drew lots of pictures of animals all the time. It was cool to see a glimpse of that little boy again.




After The Shedd, we walked to The Navy Pier. This was the most challenging part of the trip. The hubby typed in the address of Navy Pier onto the GPS of his phone and said the total mileage was only like 1.2 miles from The Shedd to Navy Pier...so it's not like it was far. However, if you listened to the little one, you might have thought it was going to be an eighteen mile trek across the desert during the dry season with a large dung beetle hot on your tail. It was not that bad. It was a really nice day and it was really pretty on Lake Michigan. We're really happy we made the walk, but the kids still act like they were abused.


We did a little shopping on Michigan Ave, met Katydid by the Hancock building and ate a little gelato and took off the next morning. We're going back again this summer. We've got plans to visit the Field Museum, do more shopping, go back to The Shedd, spend a little more time at Navy Pier, and enjoy the pool that was on the roof of the hotel.