To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Check under the cut for trip narrative and pictures!

Chandra and I arrived on Thursday morning, and after Whitney picked us up from O'Hare, we all spent the afternoon at Ellen and Sarah's apartment, where we met (and scared) Johann.



After lunch and a quick walk to a nearby park,

[interesting house along the way]

it was time to get ready for Whitney's birthday dinner at the top of the Hancock Center.



We all looked pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Whitney's fake nails were a thing of awe in and of themselves.

[Left to right: me, Chandra, Ellen, and Whitney, who is unfortunately a bit blurry]

Whit went all out and rented a limo to drive us there and back. We pretended we were the president, just without the police escort. Or the secret service agents. Or the public office. Er. Okay, so we weren't the president. But it was still awesome.



When we got there, we went up to the 96th floor for drinks and appetizers.



Because we are all kind of dorky, there were Shirley Temples all around.



We also saw a very tenacious spider clinging to the window outside. Recall that this is 96 stories above street level.



Dinner was amazing. AMAZING, I TELL YOU. One day, I will learn to cook something as awesome as the pork chop with apples and raisins that I had. I didn't have room to taste the other meals at our table, but I hear they were fantastic as well.

We got back to Ellen and Sarah's apartment, where we had sparkling grape juice and red tea, and watched the DVD of Sweeney Todd in preparation for seeing the real thing the next night. It actually had less gore in it than I remembered from the theatre; probably a good thing, since we were stuffed to the gills. Afterwards, we picked up the extremely friendly cats Whitney's family was catsitting for the weekend and headed for the northern suburbs and for bed.

[one of the catsat cats]

Friday, we had planned to visit the zoo and Navy Pier, and otherwise do outdoor activities, but the weather conspired against us. More accurately, it was nice-if-cloudy from the moment we awoke, all through the hour-long Metra ride into the city, and up until we got onto the L, whereupon it immediately began pouring down rain. We had been headed toward the zoo, but quickly decided to go the opposite way towards the aquarium instead. Naturally, as soon as we switched trains, it cleared up again and was beautiful, if windy, for the rest of the day. WEATHER, WHY MUST YOU MOCK ME??

But the Shedd Aquarium is pretty awesome, so we didn't mind so much. We walked forever from somewhere on the Brown line in the loop along the lake to get there, stopping for lunch along the way. We had a couple of seagulls come around looking shifty, but they were not appeased by the pickle Ellen threw at them.


Somewhere in Millennium Park?


Also somewhere in the park?


Navy Pier from elsewhere on the lake.


A lighthouse...and another lighthouse? Not sure what that structure in the foreground is.


Adler Planetarium


Seagull and pickle


Part of the skyline from the lakeside.


The Shedd from a long way away


The Field Museum, from my usual laggardly vantage point behind everyone else...

At the aquarium, I was enthralled by all the fishy architecture. The chandeliers had sealife on them, as did the ceiling. There were stone whales above doorways, and the octopi clinging to the hanging lights.



An aquarium in the middle of Chicago does, in fact, have not just one, but three whales in it. WHALES. IN THE MIDWEST. Photo evidence:



I think that was the mama beluga they had. There were two calves as well.

There were also dolphins, which performed for us! It was not exactly like SeaWorld or similar, but it was fairly close. I tried to take pictures, but kept getting shots of turbid water after a dolphin had jumped, so I switched to video.

Video 1 Video 2 [only the first one has sound]

After the fishy goodness, we wandered back by the Field to meet up with Kate and Sarah at the Bean



and to have deep dish pizza at Giordano's, which was divine. I think that was probably enough cheese for a month. Mmmmmmmm, pizza. We rolled out the door and down a couple blocks to the Cadillac Theatre for Sweeney Todd. It was the same production we saw in London three years ago (the minimalist one where the actors are also the pit orchestra), but with a different cast. Some of them couldn't quite make up their minds as to whether they wanted to have a British or American accent, but that's about the only fault I could find. This Johanna was much, much better than the one we saw in London; she actually had more than one expression! And this Mrs. Lovett played the tuba, which was highly entertaining. She struck a note in between the brash, bold Mrs. Lovett of Patty Lupone in London and the demented little girl of Helena Bohnam-Carter in the movie, and the combination was a good one. A woman played Pirelli in this show, which was an interesting twist. I liked having another female voice in the chorus parts. Again, there was less blood than I remembered from last time; nobody died until after the intermission!

Come to think of it, my only other complaint about the show as that it went on about twenty minutes too long for us to catch the 10:30 train back north, and we had to wait for the 12:30 one. Urk. the next morning was a bit difficult, yes. But the next day involved the zoo and Navy Pier, so that was excellent. (The weather, which was windy and cold, was less excellent, but at least it didn't rain on us.) We started off with the big cat enclosure at the zoo. The male lion, obviously used to many tourists toting cameras, posed for us:



We got to watch the seals getting fed and playing with pool rings, which was great fun. There were also many, many bears. Apparently it was "give bones to bears" day, because every single one of them had a bone they were chewing on (or dropping into the pit separating them from the humans...).



After viewing birds and monkeys, and a quick trip to the petting zoo, we were off via Kate's van to Navy Pier. I of course needed my quotient of tacky, and many of us wanted to see the stained glass museum there. We didn't have much time, but I still took lots of pictures, because ooooh, pretty. I especially enjoyed the multiple Tiffanys they had there. (There's just something about Tiffany glass that's exceptionally beautiful, I think.)



That's the end of my pictures, but not the trip. We had a wonderful dinner, and then a series of Smash Brothers battles at Whitney's house (flashbacks to senior year! I felt like I should have comps reading to do), then played glow-in-the-dark mini golf. I adore mini golf, and for an indoor course, this one was actually pretty complex. No water traps, but there were several where you had to bounce the ball off of boxes or walls, and a few where you had to get it through a gap in some sort of wooden structure in order to get it into the hole. I managed two holes in one, and came in second out of the seven of us who were there.

I went home with Kate, and we watched BSG, to our delight and Ellen and Sarah's great confusion. Because, obviously, the fourth episode of the fourth season is a great place to start watching BSG... *g* My one non-spoilery comment is: awwww. Those of you who watched will know what I'm talking about.

Kate's Pomeranian is as fluffy as two Johanns, and cheerfully barky as well. I don't think I want to own a Pom, but visiting one was enjoyable, as were Kate's lovely parents.

Sunday, we woke up late, lolled around with the cats, played more video games, and, because we obviously hadn't had enough of it in the preceding three days, took a walk in a nearby nature preserve. We meandered our way back to L stations and the airport, and made our many ways home. My plane was delayed by thirty minutes, but they turned off the cabin lights after we left the gate, and I was out like, well, a light. (This is testament to how tired I was. The only other time I've ever slept on a plane was the one from Exeter to Paris after I'd gotten approximately one hour of sleep the night before.)

So that was Chicago! It's a great city, and I hope to see it again sometime. (I'd contemplate moving there, except if this was "spring," I'm fairly certain winter would kill me if the cost of living didn't get there first.) And yay for seeing people whom I haven't seen since graduation nearly two years ago! We must do this more often. :)