My favorite part of our trip to Chicago was the fact that we had no plan. We never had anywhere that we needed to be by a certain time. Isn’t that the best part of all vacations? I’m someone who lives by lists, often several in a single day. I love vacation because it breaks me from my routines and forces me to re-evaluate my habits.
Because we enjoyed Nana’s lunch so much the other day, we decided to check out their brunch too! Martin had the breakfast burrito, which was HUGE! He got it vegetarian so we could share plates.
I had the banana-granola pancakes. These were super sugary, but delicious. I had hoped the granola would be really great in pancakes, but I found it to just be a little too weird. Still, I had no problem eating them!
After brunch, we headed downtown without much of a plan at all. It was another cold, windy day in Chicago. 🙁 This entire trip I wished I had my winter jacket. The temperature was only in the mid 40s most of the time with a biting wind (it is the windy city!). I found myself wearing nearly all my shirts every day. I eventually found some long knit half-gloves that helped to keep my hands warmer, which made a big difference.
We ended up spending most of the afternoon and evening on our final day in Chicago with Martin’s college friend and his wife. We had a great time! We finally made it to the infamous “bean” sculpture in Millennium Park.
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| This is me taking a picture from the center of the bean. |
We also stumbled upon the Cultural Center, which used to be the public library. It had a beautiful Tiffany glass dome in the middle of the building.
As an added bonus, it had a free art exhibit called Morbid Curiosity. It reminded me a lot of Barebones’ Halloween production because it had the same playful, reverent, and curious tone to exploring our mortality. It was pretty cool.
We stopped in the Chicago Tribune Tower for some tea and played around in the Museum of Contemporary Art gift shop.
We eventually decided to have dinner at Sen Sushi Bar in Oak Park. I was so hungry, I forgot to take any pictures! There are some good pictures of the place on their website, however. I had the Futo Veggie Maki, which is a sushi roll with spinach, asparagus, cucumber, and avocado. It was fantastic! I gobbled them up in no time. What I didn’t realize when I ordered is that the vegetarian sushi plates are half the size of the fish sushi plates… So, I ordered another plate! This time I had the Veggie Tempura Maki. Tempura is basically deep fried veggies. So this sushi roll had deep fried asparagus, sweet potato, and scallion. The best part was the spicy mayo. Yum!
We hopped on the Megabus at some ungodly hour this morning after standing in the rain for 45 minutes and arrived home to Oreo who was super excited to see us. A fantastic vacation and it’s good to be home!
Fun photos!