Chicago

Mom & I went to Chicago last weekend for 3 days. The weather was actually better than I expected. Friday was cold but sunny. Saturday & Sunday were a bit warmer but cloudy. All in all, a couple layers and we stayed warm enough. We stayed downtown and walked everywhere. Both of our legs were a bit sore by Sunday. It was actually Mom's first time to downtown Chicago. I went twice my senior year of high school for school trips and several years ago (10?) with a friend for fun. So, I was the tour guide.
We started out Friday window shopping on the Magnificent Mile. Found out the Ghiradelli store was giving away free samples of peppermint bark - we made it back there on Saturday too! We took a quick look in American Girl Place just to see what the hoopla was all about. This was the view of the Wrigley Building from our hotel.

Saturday we walked down to the gigantic Macy's on State Street. It used to be Marshall Field's flagship store. When Dad was little, his family would make the trek into Chicago to look at the animated windows. We went inside too to look at the Christmas decorations and the 45 foot tall Christmas tree in the Walnut Room.

Then we visited the Christkindlmarket in Daly Plaza. It is a German open air Christmas market that's about 13 years old. It was smaller than I expected but lots of great Christmas ornaments handcrafted and imported direct from Germany. From there we headed down past Millenium Park & "The Bean" -
to the Art Institute of Chicago. Saturday night it was raining and we were a bit wet when we finally made it to the theatre. We saw Wicked. A delightful retelling of the "behind the scenes" story of The Wizard of Oz. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sunday was a walk down to Navy Pier to check out the skyline and get blown to bits by the wind before heading home. Thankfully we left before any weather-induced travel delays hit due to the cold front.

Next up - Christmas!