Chicago, September, 21, 2011

We took the El back to Midway to catch our plane home.  After arriving at Midway, we hung out for just a few minutes at the CTA machines and quickly found people willing to accept 4 complimentary CTA passes that were good for another few days.   After a quick flight back to Nashville and a 2-hour drive, we’ve once again arrived safely home. 

Chicago, September 20, 2011

We went down to the Chicago River this morning and boarded  a boat for a 75-minute architectural tour of the Chicago waterfront.  It was a great way to spend a sunny, 70 degree day in Chicago!  Afterwards, we grabbed a quick lunch and walked around the lakefront, stopping to talk and enjoy an ice cream with good friends.  We ended our last day in Chicago with an excellent dinner at Sapori’s Trattoria.  Chef Anthony Barbanette wowed us with an assortment of tapas and delicious bread pudding.

Chicago, September 19, 2011

This morning we took the El to Oak Park just west of Chicago to walk around and see the Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses and Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace.  This is the area where the Favs once lived.  Later in the afternoon we made our way to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play the Brewers.  We had Chicago dogs outside the park and beer inside the park.  Even though the Cubs are 22 games out of first place there were over 35,000 fans there (park holds around 40k) and the Cubs won 5-1.  We went back to Sheffield’s after the game to celebrate.

Chicago, September 18, 2011

We got an early start and went to the 9:30 a.m. service at 4th Presbyterian Church downtown. It is a huge church and the pews were filled. Senior minister John Buchanan has announced his retirement at the end of the year and the Favs wanted to hear him one more time. It was a good sermon. One of his statements stuck with me and I paraphrase “… if Christianity was a crime would there be enough evidence against you to convict you?” After church we enjoyed a wonderful brunch at The Four Farthings Tavern and Grill with their old friends; Mike and Nancy, and Doug and Barb. Mike, we feel, is destined for greatness. He has studied the art of lip print reading. He was gracious enough to read several of our lip blots (on paper napkins) after our brunch. As he read mine, thoughts of palm readers came to mind and I tried my best to show my poker face. He talked about certain characteristics of the lip print and finally said that it appeared that I had a lot of experience with numbers, most likely having a job in the accounting field. Although I’m sure my poker face wasn’t very good, I was still quite impressed with his new found “skill”. He also gives demonstrations of his “flea circus” to groups that are interested. (Seriously!!!) They were all very nice people and we were honored to get to meet them.

 Later that afternoon we attended the play “In the Other Room”. There is a second title, but we will let you Google that to see what it is and what it is all about. Let’s just say it was quite comical and there was some discussion as to how the play would go over in our home town. Later in the evening we went to Kingston Mines and listened to several Blues bands.

Chicago, September 17, 2011

We drove to Nashville with a couple of our “Favs” to catch a Southwest flight to Chicago. The Favs lived there about 12 years ago and were kind enough to ask us to go with them and re-live some of their Chicago memories. Of course, there is enough “analism” within the four of us that you know the trip includes an Excel spreadsheet to track expenses for the group.

We arrived at Midway and bought 4 weekly CTA passes for the “El”. We opted for public transportation and walking as our chief modes of transportation. What better way to experience such a great city. After settling in our “flat” near Wrigley Field we visited Sheffield’s Beer and Wine Garden to soak up some Chicago culture. Later we enjoyed deep-dish pizza from Giordano’s.