Chicago

So, it seems that July has come and gone.  I was only home for half of the month.  There was way too much that happened to fit into one blog.  So, I'm going to start at the beginning and work forward.  For the first week of July we traveled to Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana.  We were meeting Tom's family for a family reunion near Nauvoo, IL. We decided to start the trip by meeting Tom's brother Shaun & his wife Alicia in Chicago.  The original plan was to have all night there with them (they were coming from SLC, UT).  Unfortunately, their plane was delayed and they didn't get in until around 10:00 that night.  We flew in earlier that afternoon after a very early flight from Seattle.  We took a little commuter train to get to the downtown area and checked into our motel room and was able to get a little nap.

 (View from our motel room)

The motel was a little bit scary.  It was right next to the train, which made it easy to get to the motel but a little annoying once we were there.  It was also a pretty old building that made me fear for my life anytime I got in the elevator.  The bedroom was pretty good, but it had two smaller beds again (this is becoming a bit of a tradition with us in motels), plus it didn't have a great walkway to the bathroom.  Definitely not somewhere I will stay again, but it worked for one night.

(Motel Room)

Later that night we wandered around downtown Chicago waiting for Shaun and Alicia to arrive.  It was a nice walk, especially when it cooled down (remember we are wimpy Washingtonians now....it was hot).  Once Shaun and Alicia arrived we took off for this little pizza joint called Uno's to have us some official Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.  It was surprisingly delicious.  My previous experience with Deep Dish Pizza hasn't been the best.  I think in general they are greasy and heavy.  I don't know how they make theirs differently, but it wasn't greasy and very delicious!  We also chose to get a couple of appetizers (did I mention that we didn't eat until around 11:00 at night) we were quite hungry.  We were surprised how big the appetizers ended up being.  We got "Onion Crisps" and a "Vegetable Tray".  Everything was delicious.  Luckily we walked all the way there so we had to walk all the way back to the motel, so we had to wear off some of the food before we went to sleep.

Downtown Chicago was interesting, but that's about it.  I enjoyed our experience there, but I don't think we'll go back.  Definitely my favorite part was dinner that night.

(Cool Art Eye)

(Downtown Chicago Library - we loved the metal on the top)