The next morning, Justin left the hotel early to attend his first day of visitation activities at Northwestern University. I woke up and finished an application. I planned to walk to campus to meet Justin but because of the rain, I decided to ride the hotel shuttle instead. Greg the shuttle driver educated me on all there is to know about Chicago and I forgot to tip him after he dropped me off. Oops. Justin and I finally found each other and I joined the rest of his prospective graduate student group and went to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. After the planetarium, the group went down to Navy Pier to attend a dinner cruise on the Spirit of Chicago. This was our first time on a dinner cruise, but it ended up being a great time with an excellent selection of food, entertainment and luckily for us we ended up at a table with some good people. I even won a drink ticket during the trivia game portion of the cruise, and one of the guys at our table won a drink ticket after rapping the entire Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song. The view of the city from Lake Michigan was amazing, but sadly, because of my inability to function in cold weather, I forgot to take photos while standing on the deck.
The following day, Justin went back to the open house activities and I walked around downtown Evanston and did some shopping. I even enjoyed a taste of familiarity and ate at Panera. I could see myself being very happy in Evanston. Justin toured two national laboratories. We then went to tour the campus and visit the bookstore. The campus was, in my opinion not as pretty as UMaryland's campus, but it was still a beautiful campus. Did I mention how windy it was?
The dome building is where Justin's office would be located if he decided to attend Northwestern
We finally made our way to properly see Chicago. Justin was in charge of picking our hotel and although it was decent, even our cab driver called it a "dump" when dropping us off. He also suggested that I never let Justin select hotels for our vacations in the future. I tipped him generously. Justin wanted to relive his last visit to Chicago, so we stayed near Wrigleyville and later found out as we walked towards Wrigley Field that we were in Boys Town, a gay neighborhood. I mentioned this to Justin, and as I look towards him, he walked by a lamp post with rainbow decorations and then walked under a group of rainbow flags. I am certain he was fairly oblivious as he proceeded to ask, "how do you know?" No wonder we passed a large leather store!We walked to the Metro, which Justin tells me is the location of the first and last show the original Smashing Pumpkins played. He showed me where he slept and ate while he waited for the show.
We had very little time in Chicago, but we attempted to make the most of what time we had. Unlike some of our other subway attempts, we were not walking around with luggage. We could have possibly passed as non-tourists except we continued to refer to the map while trying to get on the el. I always thought it was called the "L" and assumed it traveled in an L-shape? Oops! We eventually made it to Michigan Avenue and joined the rest of the tourists in a magnificent mile's worth of shopping. At some point we saw fire trucks and police cars circling the streets and things became chaotic with sirens. Justin and I followed to see what the excitement was all about. Dozens of squad cars, and fire engines blocked the street and firefighters ran into some hotel with axes and oxygen tanks. Justin thought maybe somebody would jump. And it frightened me to find all the other lookie-loos looking upwards. Nothing happened while we were there and we continued on to the John Hancock building. We went up 94 stories to the observation deck to see all of Chicago. Most importantly, we had our picture taken before heading up to the observation deck, and for the first time in MANY attempts, Justin had his eyes open. And of course, I bought the photo!
During the boat tour, a few grad students told us about The Bean at Millennium Park. It has a proper name, but supposedly everyone just refers to it as The Bean. Aside from the mass amount of tourists, it lived up to its hype in my opinion.
Inside The Bean
Proof that there was snow!
Apparently on Man vs. Food, they visit Gino's East. Justin really wanted to eat deep dish once more before leaving but we had very little time left and still needed to pick up our luggage at the hotel before heading to the airport. We walked into Gino's to ask how long it would take. The guy said 45 minutes and we were forced to decline and walked out the door. We stood outside the door for a few minutes and after some thought, Justin HAD to try it. Ordering as soon as possible and letting our waiter know that we had a flight to catch, we ate our delicious cheese, pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Justin claims that my choice of not wanting green peppers ruined the pizza and that it lacked the deep dish purpose because it was plain. Justin complaining about my food preference being plain? No surpise there!
Look at the pizza crust!
Turns out, I have been obsessing over the wrong city. The weather and the wind frighten me to the core, but I loved Chicago. The city lived up to all of my expectations and I cannot wait to return. Hopefully next time, it will be warmer.
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