Thursday, November 6, 2008

Scenic Chicago

K: Last weekend, Mark and I traveled to Chicago to secure my F4 Visa at the Korean consulate. I will include more detail of the visa process in the next post. This post will focus on the fun part of the trip, which included a little bit of sightseeing and a lot of eating.

We left at 1:15am on Sunday morning on the Megabus. I had never taken it before, but it's basically a double-decker bus that travels around the midwest. I think the St. Louis bus goes to Columbia, Kansas City, and Chicago. (I know there are other locations I'm missing, but those are the big ones.) The bus picked us up along the side of Union Station. (Right where Have a Nice Day Cafe used to be, for those who are pathetic enough, um, like me, to know where that is.) Taking the bus ended up being a GREAT decision. We got there in about 5 hours, with a half hour break at a rest stop in the middle. Also, they have free WiFi, which is fantastic.

When we arrived in Chicago, we walked about 2 miles in the dark at 5:30 in the morning to our hotel. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on Wabash and it was great. The room wasn't very expensive and it was right in the middle of everything. Also, the people there were nice enough to check us in when we arrived at 6am, so we got to crash for a couple hours.

Sunday morning we did the typical touristy stuff, walked to Navy Pier and took pictures of the water.





After walking around the city for awhile, we decided to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art. We figured we'd spend a couple hours there and expand our minds culturally. We lasted all of 45 minutes. Other people were gazing thoughtfully for hours at flashing neon lights with random words strung together and videos of mice running through mazes while someone pounded on a bag with a hammer. Frankly, we just didn't get it.


We decided we needed something a little more our speed, so we stopped by a nearby Mexican restaurant for... the most horrible margaritas we've ever tasted in our lives. I think the guy just poured tequila in the glasses and called it a day. I was literally gagging with every drink I took. Ugh.



Our best decision of the day was getting deep dish Chicago pizza for dinner. It was fantastic!


Look at Mark, doesn't he look like he's drooling?



There is no such thing as too much cheese!


The weather was so great, we tried to eat at outdoor cafes and people watch as much as we could!


The second day, after we got my visa taken care of that (more on the next post), we just hung out around the city -- walking around and taking it in.
That night, it was still unbelievable out, so we found a couple outdoor places to eat and have a couple drinks.

I'm posting a close up pic of this because it was melted brie in a crepe with rasberry sauce. *drooling*


And later that night we went to a local comedy club, Zanies. There were 4 comedians, and about 12 people in the audience. The main act mostly talked about what it's like to be approaching 30 and living at home with his parents. Boy, could we relate. "It's just so funny cuz it's true..."


We returned back to St. Louis on Tuesday afternoon. All in all, a great trip.

3 comments:

Julia Goolia said...

You should have told me you'd be in our neck of the woods. I would've gladly eaten all of that fabulous Chicago food with you!

Fun trip, Kimmie. But the Visa situation sounds awful.

Unknown said...

Ha, it didn't occur to me that Milwaukee is close to Chicago. DOY!

Lindsey said...

sounds like a fun trip (minus the Visa heroics)!!!