Chris and I celebrated our 10th anniversary this December by taking a vacation. Like our honeymoon ten years ago, Chris did all the planning so the final destination would be a surprise to me. After seeing a picture of a ferris wheel on Chris' I-Pad one evening, however, I figured out the surprise before our trip: Chicago!
I'd wanted to visit Chicago since reading The Devil in the White City but never envisioned myself visiting in the winter. As we sat on the plane waiting to depart, the crew announced the temperature in Chicago was -2 degrees. I was anxious and thought we were nuts going somewhere so cold.
We spent our first three nights at the W Hotel overlooking the Navy Pier, a nice nod to our wedding night spent at a W Hotel ten years ago. We hoped to ride the ferris wheel at the Navy Pier our first day in town, but it was not running because it was too cold for the ferris wheel operators to stand outside. That's how cold it was during our visit.
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| The grounds around Navy Pier were so pretty with the snow! |
We visited the Chicago Cultural Center after our failed ferris wheel ride. Chris was excited about this stop because of an architecture exhibit. While Chris was engrossed in the exhibit, I wondered through the building and discovered what is possibly the most gorgeous room I have ever seen. Pictures do no justice to the millions of tiny tiles that made up the literary themed mosaics on the ceiling and arches. I loved the color scheme and the light reflecting off the gold-colored tiles. I was more than happy to sit in this beautiful place while Chris read about abstract architectural things that were largely lost on me.
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| Example of the abstract architecture in the exhibit. Okay, so I actually liked this one. |
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| Architects like to mock McMansions. A little girl saw this and exclaimed, "That looks like our neighbor's house!" |
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| So lovely! |
In the evening we saw Hamilton, which was amazing! It is easily the best musical I've ever seen and was possibly the highlight of the entire trip. Who wouldn't enjoy a fast-paced, witty, and smart hip-hop musical featuring prominent figures from the American Revolution and tons of historical facts? Chris knocked it out of the park by getting tickets to this show.
Our second day in Chicago we visited Union Station, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Morton Arboretum. The Art Institute is so huge that the visit felt like sensory overload much of the time. It didn't help that moving through the buildings required being on a certain floor.
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| With the Rio Grande Logo on the Union Station tree. |
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| @ Union Station. My fuzzy glove in the corner. Taking a picture is tricky with bulky winter gear. |
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| In case you forgot my name. |
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| Asking a stranger to take a picture is a lot when it's so cold! |
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| With one of the Art Institute Lions |
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The Art Institute is so big that it can contain an entire room from the old Chicago Stock
Exchange. |
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| Some of the more famous pieces we saw. |
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| Cafe lunch was so good, even if our final selections caused an employee tothrow an entire plate of perfectly good food into the trash. I was shocked! |
In the evening, we drove outside Chicago to the Morton Arboretum to walk one mile in the snow in below-freezing temperatures at night. I was wearing five pairs of pants, two pairs of gloves, and three hats, and still enjoyed warming up by the fires along the trail. All the Christmas lights in the moonlit snow along the trail, however, were beautiful. It was nice to do something where we were possibly the only tourists.
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| Coolest tree lights ever! |
Our third day in Chicago started with a visit to the Willis Tower Sky Deck. I thought this would be cheesy but I ended up enjoying it a lot.
Next, we, along with approximately 10,000 other people in the area, visited the Museum of Science and Industry. We stood in line for almost two hours just to buy admission tickets. Luckily, we had a museum pass that gave us free general admission, and the lady selling us our special exhibit tickets gave us a generous discount because she was also from the valley.
The Museum of Science and Industry is located in the only building remaining from the World's Fair in 1893, and it is a really cool building. The museum is gigantic. It was yet another place so large and overflowing with quality exhibits that most of the visit felt like sensory overload. What an amazing place.
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| Just a few planes, a train, and a giant tree surrounded by tons of large trees. Your typical museum lobby. |
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One small section on one floor of the map said, "u-boat." This giant room with a u-boat in it was that understated section
of the map. |
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| Upon realizing how large the museum was, Chris promised not to read anything until we arrived at the bike exhibit, our next destination. The next room we entered, however, was filled with architectural drawings and models. Chris fell through on his promise. |
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| The first bike we saw the bike exhibit was wood. Chris said, "I've always wanted to build a wood bike." I said, "Too bad it's already been done." He replied, "Well, I've always thought it would be cool to make a bike out of cardboard," as if to prove he still had an original idea. The last bike in the exhibit was this aqua bike made out of cardboard. |
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Christmas Trees from around the world were so neat. This one from Mexico was decorated
with Loteria cards. Loteria cards featuring the topless mermaid, the drunkard, the devil,
the brave man wielding a knife, and the liquor bottles were conveniently missing.
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| A Lego exhibit by a Lego Certified Professional, which is an actual career title apparently. |
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| 16,500 of the 24 bricks on the board on the left were used to build the tower on the right. |
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| Our last exhibit: a mirror maze. |
When we left the Museum of Science and Industry, it was snowing! The snow was fun to play in for a few minutes but made for a very long drive out of Chicago.
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| So much traffic leaving Chicago that we had to stop for a deep dish pizza. Poor us. |
We spent an entire day in the house doing nothing as we sat around the fireplace. In the evening, we ate dinner at the local supper club, which was probably my favorite dining experience of the trip. It was like eating at the restaurant version of a stereotypical grandma's house. We chatted with friendly locals, and we ate fried cheese curds, broasted chicken, and a salad bar that included gizzards, liver spread, and pickled herring.
It was ridiculously cold in Wisconsin. The river behind the Frank Lloyd Wright house was frozen. At night, hired snow plows and snow blowers cleared driveways and sidewalks in the neighborhood where we stayed. One evening, we blew bubbles and watched them freeze. We made a special trip to Family Dollar just to buy bubbles, something I never dreamed I'd do on a trip without Katy.
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| Frozen couch overlooking a frozen river behind the house. |
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| Sunrise over the frozen river. |
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| Frozen bubble. Frozen feet. |
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| Braving the -24 windchill without a hat! |
After two nights in the Frank Lloyd Wright house, it was time to head back to Chicago. On the way, Chris stopped in Milwaukee to see a building by Santiago Calatrava that looked like a boat setting sail on the (frozen) lake. I opted to enjoy the building from the warmth of the car. This trip taught me that being warm actually makes me enjoy architecture more.
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| Chris braves the weather to take a picture. |
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| It sure looked cold out there... |
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| ...so I settled for a picture from the car... |
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| ...until Chris told me, "You have to go inside." |
We stayed at the Trump hotel our last night in Chicago and it was fa-ncy. We stayed in a Trump hotel in vegas several years ago and loved it. The Trump hotel in Chicago did not disappoint, especially the huge bathtub.
Our last adventure in Chicago was a bus tour based on the book, The Devil in the White City. The tour was interesting but entirely too long for such a cold day. By the end of the tour, the bus windows were iced over and all my toes were numb. One highlight of the tour, however, was visiting the old entrance to the Chicago Stockyards, a favorite date place of H.H. Holmes and one of his wives (creepy!). Visiting the stockyards brought back haunting memories of reading The Jungle as a teenager, which was probably appropriate for a tour about a serial killer. Our tour guide claimed the area still smells bad on very hot summer days because there is so much blood in the ground still, but she also claimed several buildings were haunted and told a story about a devil baby. So, who knows.
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| A replica from the the 1893 fair. |
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| The old Chicago Stockyards gate. |
And then, it was time to head home. The trip was a real adventure. We saw awesome sights and an amazing show, we stayed in beautiful places, and we experienced really cold weather for the first time. It certainly wasn't the trip I would have planned, but it turned out to be awesome and very memorable.
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| Chris' sketches left in rental guestbooks. Left: River Dwelling, Dec. 2007 (honeymoon). Right: Frank Lloyd Wright House, Dec. 2017 |
