Chicago is awesome. Definitely my kind of town. I love big cities—great restaurants, delis, shops and grocery stores (Trader Joes! Three buck Chuck!) all within 2 blocks. We stayed 2 blocks off Michigan in the heart of big city cool. Chicago is like the perfect blend of the huge east coast cities and the green and more relaxed ones on the west coast. The only think I noticed missing was they definitely did not have enough street vendors…you know, the kind that hawk hot dogs and fake purses.
I think Morgan is going to be a big city girl…she lived it up in Morgan’s C(hic)ago and got to ride the El, a city bus and a cab. And, just so I don’t have to repeat it for every day we were there…it was HOT. And HUMID. The entire time.
We arrived Thursday around noon. I met up with Jen, Brian and Morgan in the airport and we cabbed it big city style to meet Madre and Bjorn. Almost immediately (after grabbing a sandwich at one of those aforementioned great delis) we headed towards American Girl Place to shop. Morgan definitely loved the babies and even managed to have mama and papa buy one for her (including a matching outfit for Morgan and baby). I love that store and those dolls. I can’t wait for Morgan to get older to fully appreciate them. From there, Mimi went shopping at H&M. LOVE that store. Morgan also discovered her love for pigeons…she chased them in her stroller.
We found a cute little Mexican restaurant called Su Casa (right next to Avacado Alley) for dinner…yummy queso fundido and margaritas. While we finished dinner Mama took Morgan to walk around…and she came back so excited that she saw Puppy Bones (aka dog treats) at a nearby hotel. She just kept saying all bright-eyed and excited “Puppy Bones! Puppy Bones!” I really wish you never lose that kind of excitement from childhood. We hit up Niketown that night too…it was definitely a hub of pre-race excitement.
Friday morning Jen, Brian, Peggy (Brian’s mom) and myself headed to the race expo. This is where I felt the most sad that I wouldn’t be running. The excitement of a race expo is so…exciting. Asics has a lot of things that say “To hell and back 26.2 miles” and who would have thought in the case of Chicago 07 this would be totally true. Lots of fun t-shirts and things to do…it was fun nonetheless and I managed to get some good shwag. Brian met-up with his two charities and I chatted with the Girls on the Run peeps for a while. We headed back to the condo and had lunch at…wait for it…COSI! Yum!
After lunch my mom and I headed to the Art Institute of Chicago. They have a great collection of impressionist art…a lot of the very famous Monet paintings like Water Lily and they also house the American Gothic painting. I had yet to see Lake Michigan so we walked over there from the museum and once there decided to walk back to the condo along the lakeshore (seemed like a better idea than to walk all the way back to the train)…thanks to a bottle of water from Jimmy Johns, we survived (again, not enough street vendors hawking lemonade and water).
Friday night we hit up Giordanos for some famous Deep Dish pizza. My dad and I indulged in a bottle of Hardys wine. My grandfather, who passed away when I was five, is named Hardy and he used to make wine in his really cool basement, one of those basements that thrills you as a kid (he’d make us Shirley temples from the bar). It was pretty cool even though this wine was Australian and Hardy was Canadian ;-) The Olson’s then headed to the top of the John Hancock center for a good look at Chicago at night.
Saturday meant an architectural boat tour up the Chicago river. Very cool. Then some of us hit up Navy Pier for lunch and my dad and I headed up to Wrigleyville (there was a Cubs game going on that afternoon so the trains moved awfully slow) to the Brownstone Tavern to watch the Texas game with the Chicago Texas Exes. 
I ran into a few friends and co-RAs from college…who I haven’t seen/talked to since college…that’s always fun. Texas lost but it was a good game and it was a very fun, albeit smoke-filled, bar. Take note Rocky Mountain Texas Exes—you have a pretty cush game watching location!
Sunday was the marathon…
And Monday we went home ;-)
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