My Kind of Town - Chicago 7/12 to 7/13

On July 12, we met at the Oakland airport for a second adventure away from home. This time we were off to see if Frank Sinatra knew what he was talking about when he sang the song "Chicago."
Chicago is our kind of town and it has our kind of people, too. People who - smile at you and help you find your way if you lose it! The food was "note" worthy as well and was usually served with a smile. And, did we mention that it is hopping with things to do and see? We still have things we'd like to do on another visit!

We arrived in the early evening and hopped on the "El" (for Elevated) Train which provided us with our first view of the city. Our first stop was our hotel - the Allerton Crowne Plaza on the Magnificent Mile. While staying at this hotel, we had to learn a special method for catching an elevator. The trick was to catch an elevator going down and then ride it back up to the floor you wanted - without this trick, we would have had to walk up 21 flights of stairs on multiple occasions!

Once we had settled into our room, we took our first walk in the city in search of dinner. We happened upon Pizzeria Uno, credited with the invention of Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Since the restaurant had been recommended to us, we decided to give it a try. Deep dish pizza, we learned, required quite an investment in time - 1 hour to be exact. We waited patiently and were not disappointed! Once we had filled our tummies, we returned to the hotel where we relaxed and watched some TV.

We slept in the next morning and then took a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo and the botanical gardens. We enjoyed wandering around this free zoo (which was much better than either of us expected) and made a bit of a game of making sure that MeLissa spent enough time in the shade so that she wouldn't turn out looking like a lobster (since she forgot her sunscreen - again!). Our favorite exhibits were the sea lions (including the dive bombing sea gulls) and the arctic birds where a very playful Puffin was happy to show off for us.

Once we had our fill of the zoo and the botanical gardens (which were also lovely), we returned to the hotel and attended a meet and greet where we met many of the other USA Aniridia Network Conference attendees. For more information on this non-profit organization created to assist those individuals, such as Mark with aniridia (an eye condition where the eye's iris is absent). We enjoyed learning from other conference attendees about various surgeries they had undergone and how they had improved their vision. We also were intrigued by the list of topics that would be discussed at the conference.

After the meet and greet wound down, we headed to Navy Pier dinner and a fireworks show. We ate at yummy steak sandwiches at Charlie's Ale House

While waiting for dinner, we enjoyed some cinnamon roasted almonds which were hard to stop eating! We had a few after dinner during the fireworks, too. We enjoyed the fireworks show (especially since we hadn't seen many on the 4th of July) and then wandered around Navy Pier. We decided we definitely needed to come back for another outing to try some of the fun things it offered.