More on why I love Chicago...

I'm glad that everyone thinks Chicago is great, and Katrin, you're always welcome to stay here if you're in town. :-)


Something neat about this morning...they must be filming another movie here, because walking past the Wrigley building, which is directly across the street from my building, there was a movie camera and a bunch of other equipment and people looking at computer monitors, and someone was yelling, "Ok, break from rehearsal, break from rehearsal!" I wonder what's going on.


Now, on to the weekend...we had a nice dinner at Shaw's on Friday night, despite Trey making it downtown a little later than expected (you can't get away from Chicago traffic). I'm usually the slow eater, but finished my Mahi with Asian-style veggies long before he finished his 2 pound crab....yeah, he had an oval plate that was probably about 14 inches wide and the crab took up the entire plate. It was insane, but it looked really cool.


Afterwards we went to a piano bar that was sort of a bust (the web site makes it look great though!) and so now we know where not to go again. They didn't have a real piano, just a synthesizer with a table around it to try to make it look like a piano, and the guy playing it had stuff in keys that were just a little too high for him. If you're using a synthesizer, why not transpose it down a 1/2 step or two? My chocolate martini was not the best I've ever had either. Really though, I'm probably exaggerating - it would've been a much better experience had it not been too loud. I figured piano bar = not as loud as a regular bar. Go figure.


We called it quits around midnight and walked back to our hotel, which was fantastic! If you ever need to stay downtown, this place is it. It's in a great location and is affordable.


For our late breakfast Trey found us an Irish pub called Butch McGuire's, with food that was friggin' awesome. They were starting to get all decked out for St. Patrick's Day, and we overheard some of the regulars discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the holiday falling on a Monday this year...man, I'd love to be around there. Maybe I should go after work.


Rather than go to the Museum of Science & Industry, we decided to spend our afternoon at the Chicago History Museum. Turns out our hotel was only 3 blocks away, plus Trey had never been there and I hadn't been through the exhibits since the overhauled the place a few years back. It's amazing! My favorite thing was El car #1 from 1894 (viable public transportation in 1894 - I think that's so cool!). It looked just like our El cars today, but was all wood. The free audio tour was great, too. Trey learned a lot about the history of Chicago, and I learned a little - my favorite piece of new info from the day was that in 1998 the city officially absolved Mrs. O'Leary's cow of responsibility for starting the 1871 fire.

The rest of the weekend was low key - we found a cool movie for Saturday night, and Sunday I had church and then we both had dance practice. This week's busy, but no worse than usual. Tonight is Eugene Onegin at the Lyric. If I'm feeling inspired you'll have a review later in the week.

Happy Wednesday!