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.

Home Sweet Home!

As our adventure comes to an end, I can't help but comment about our first "group trip".   We couldn't have possibly had better traveling companions in our group of 22.  By the end of the trip, we felt as if we'd made new friends and we hope they were able to return to their homes safely.   Will we take this type of trip again?   I guess the answer to that one would be, if the destination is safer and easier to do in a group, SURE!   But, we're not ready to trade in our free spirits just yet! 

Our flight from Amsterdam couldn't have been better.  We had booked two aisle seats in the center of 3 seats in the middle of the plane.   After boarding, Richard asked the stewardess if there was a possibility that the middle seat wasn't booked.   She smiled and said the flight was over sold and there wasn't a chance.  We patiently waited for our traveling companion to board, not wanting to get too comfortable and buckle in.  When the doors to the plane finally closed, the stewardess walked past us and smiled and gave us the thumbs up!   She said there was one empty seat on the plane....how lucky are we?


Nine hours and three movies later, we land in Memphis, TN, then on to Muscle Shoals international airport!  We arrived home around 9 p.m. after having been up for 28 hours, and our dog was standing at the door to greet us!


Two days later we're both still a little shaky and disoriented.  But the bags are unpacked, the lawn is mowed, and the Pflueger Odyssey continues!   We'll be packing up again in two weeks.....stay tuned!

Amsterdam

Just as they said, the wake up call came at 1 a.m.!!!   We actually were asleep (with some help) at 8:30 p.m., so we got up feeling rested.  Our shuttle left the hotel at 2 a.m. and we arrived at the airport around 2:50 a.m.   Our flight on KLM was great!!  We managed to get a window and aisle seat with an empty seat between us.  We both slept most of the 3 hours to Amsterdam.  We decided to check our bags so that we could be free to discover Amsterdam.   While packing last night, we put everything we didn’t need in the checked luggage.    Richard had been to Amsterdam 25 years ago and said he was there for 7 days and it rained every day.   That went in one ear and right out the other.  Duh!   We’d not seen any rain for the past 15 days and it had been HOT!!!    After we landed, we took the train to the Central Station.   The weather was…..cool (60ish) and RAINING, and our umbrella and raincoats were in our checked luggage.   After walking around awhile, we ducked into a sidewalk pastry shop and ordered a coffee.  We began talking with the shop owner and his wife and asked them where we could buy an umbrella.  She quickly went to the back room and came out with an umbrella and said, “here, you can have this one”.   We couldn’t believe it.   She said that someone had left it there and that we were welcome to it.   So, we ordered a pastry and sat and visited for awhile.  We didn’t want to press our luck, so we headed back to the train station (with the umbrella).  After arriving back at the airport, we found a young oriental couple that were leaving the airport and we offered them our umbrella.  They seemed surprised, but gladly accepted it, smiled, and thanked us.   So we’re sitting here at the gate in Amsterdam, awaiting our 8 hour flight to Memphis.  More later, pending a safe arrival back in the U.S.A.!!!