Chicago

Last weekend was a long weekend (holiday weekend for Labour Day) and we went to Chicago.
Chicago is about 5 1/2 hours from here so we left early Saturday morning and met Jamie's mom in time for Sabbath School (lots of children in Cooper's age group so that was fun) and church in Lansing, then had lunch with her and continued on. We can highly recommend the Westin Chicago River North - make sure you have a river not a city view - we requested a city view but on check-in the woman suggested we change as city views apparently look into other buildings rather than out across the city. Only issue was that we were on the 4th floor so had quite a lot of street noise - next time we would go for a much higher floor!After checking in we walked downtown and had a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant a few blocks away. Again, another recommended stop if you are in Chicago en route to visiting us! Fine dining restaurants can be a bit of a challenge at times with a one-year old, especailly when there is a 30 minute wait to just get a table and it's already after his bed-time. But Cooper managed well - asking the waiter for "hunna-toast" (honey toast!). They did oblige, although I dont think they had a toaster there as the bread came out lightly fried in butter! Quite the treat ("ooooooooh ma-ma" was the comment made). Jamie had the Basil pesto pasta but was disappointed - but only in that 'we have that at home' and indeed it tasted exactly like the pesto pasta I made from the mountains of basil we have in the garden so I was quite flattered but that (I recently made it following the Tra vigne recipe!! - BTW have you seen the Tra vigne circle tour on their website? Very cool - for those who dont already know the connection, Rebecca & Jeremy had their USA wedding reception at this restaurant in California (and Jeremy used to work there once-upon-a-time) and we have the cookbook! It was also the inital inspiration for our back patio!). Anwyay, back to Chicago..... I had the spinach risotto - quite delicious (and Cooper ably assisted me in finishing it once he had finished his toast and a couple of olives)
Breakfast the next day was at Grand Lux Cafe which we can also recommend although don't go there if you have problems making selections from extensive menus! Quite the awesome surroundings as you can see from this pic from their website. We spent most of the next day wandering about downtown and down to the lake (it still seems funny to me that lakes have beaches looking exactly like you're a tthe sea but there is no saltiness!)

Later in the evening we walked down to Navy Pier which is quite the place with all sorts of entertainment and restaurants, boat cruises etc. Cooper's highlight was a ride in the "blue train" as seen below....

Monday morning before leaving it was great to see The Freihammer family - we try to catch up once a year if we can (see post from Feb 2005). This was my first experience at a Swedish restaurant (Ann Sather is the name of the restaurant - Jamie thought it a little odd to have meatballs served alongside his pancakes!). Then back to the Westin to thankfully locate Jamie's watch in amongst the bed-covers (luckily that although we had checked out a couple of hours earlier, they hadn't cleaned the room just yet!) and back home via Lansing for a swing in the park with Nana.