I had an AWESOME and AMAZING weekend!!! I traveled down to Chicago/Evanston to visit Shelly and tour some of the cities. There was not a dull moment and I’m actually planning a trip back very very soon....possibly in about 3 weeks if things go smoothly. So here’s what we did in 4 days....Oh and every day was perfect without a single cloud in the sky and 80 degrees!!!
Friday:
I got on the Van Galder bus at 2pm from the Memorial Union. Minch dropped me off since he was in town to hang out. I got to the MU at 1:15pm, because I didn’t know if the bus would be busy or not seeing that it was a Holiday weekend (Labor Day).
The bus got to the MU a little late. But I got a good seat all to myself. After the first stop I had a bigger guy take the seat next to me...pretty much coming over into my seat, so the ride became a little uncomfortable for a little bit. The next stop the seats in front of me opened up and he moved to them. AH leg room again! When we got to Rockford I had a girl board the bus and sit next to me. She must have been tired, because she fell asleep pretty fast. Bad thing....she really wasn’t that cute and her head began to migrate towards my shoulder. Thank god never fell on my shoulder...she was probably drooling.
The bus arrived at the Union Station on the corner of Jackson & Canal in downtown Chicago. I saw Shelly out the window waiting for me patiently. I got out and met up with her. I was very happy to see her...but we needed to catch the Metra to Evanston and it was leaving in 5 minutes. We hailed a cab and told him to take us to the Train Station. He informed us that it was only about 1 and a half blocks away. He definitely wanted a larger fare. Shelly knew it wasn’t only a block and a half. Turned out it was 4 blocks away. Yeah, we walked/ran at a fairly quick pace. We barely caught the train, but we made it. Shelly and I got caught up on life a little bit until our stop at Davis.
We made it to her apartment and got changed quick. We were meeting some of her friends at the Jazz Festival going on in Grant Park. It was getting a little colder outside so we put on a couple of layers. We caught the L and took it into Chicago. It was a 45-minute train ride so we caught up some more. Shelly is always good conversation. She told me a bit about the “community” on the L...I definitely got to see what she meant over the weekend. You’ll just have to experience it yourself if you haven’t already.
We got into Chicago and made our way over to Grant Park after asking for some directions. Very nice guy gave us directions and we made it with ease. On the way Shelly showed me the “Vag” shaped building. Shelly described it as a “yonch” (I believe that’s how it was spelled) instead of phallic. The lights of the city were amazing and had a certain mood, which I found relaxing. We met up with Shelly’s friends and listened and talked through the rest of the jazz concert.
After that Shelly and I went to Chili’s to get a little food in us. The others went to drink some on the 25th floor of some apartment building with better security than a federal prison. Shelly and I had some good food at Chili’s....now I know its not chicago style food or anything, but it was good to us. We met up with her friends on the 25th floor. Now this girl thinks her apartment is amazing...um yeah about that. The view out to the city...yes that is awesome. Yet one should hang something on his/her walls to at least bring some life into the room. It was very bare and not really interesting. Shelly and I each had a beer to end the night, while the others went out and drank until 3am or something like that. We caught the L back at around 1am and headed straight to bed when we got back.
Saturday:
This was an extremely fun-filled busy day. We did wake up a little later...maybe about 10:30/11:00am to recover from the late night. We got ready got some breakfast at Whole Foods (which is exponentially cooler than the one in Madison, by the way). We took it on the L and headed into the city. Our first stop Millenium Park.
Millenium Park is pretty sweet. “The Bean” is really cool and the inside of it is, well, “tripping”. We defintiely took some good pictures of us in front of it and around it. Next we headed over to the Band Shell. Yeah...it looks like someone blew it up after creating it and decided that was better than their original design...which was. We continued through the park and stopped at the “boardwalk river” and dunked our feet in for a little bit. Yeah it was a tid bit nipply, but felt amazing on this 80 degree, no cloud in sight, sunny day. Some sunscreen was applied and guns were showed off...mostly Shelly’s. We continued on after about 20 minutes. Oh and I guess Shelly had a surprise for me, but was going to keep it a secret!
So we started walking....where we were going, I had no idea. I then saw Navy Pier come into sight and thought it was possibly at Navy Pier. It was, but I still had no idea what we were going to do. Finally Shelly stopped the suspense and told me. I had the option of renting some bikes and biking along the lakeshore...or...sail on a pirate ship! I picked the pirate ship. It was a really fun boat ride. Shelly and I made a lot of fun of the deck hands...as they talked about sausage-fests and flirted with each other. We got some really nice photos and some funny ones, which I’ll get up later. We had an excellent time on the boat. It was nice a calm and we had some good talks as well.
Right when we got off the boat we bought some well deserved Brown Sugar Cinnamon Roasted Almonds. My God are those things GOOD! We finished off a ½ pound of those babies in under 10 minutes, no doubt. We headed back over to Michigan Ave to do a little shopping after that fun adventure.
We got in a bunch of stores...more than I can remember. I got to try on some Rock & Republic Jeans too. Yeah that team that decided to take over Superweek. I tried on the jeans and they were really nice. But I know why they are so well funded. The cheapest pair of jeans was 205$! Um yeah I’ll pass for now on those. We just tried on some stuff and looked through the stores. Just a couple things were bought.
We decided we would eat at The Cheesecake Factory. It was pretty busy, but only had to wait 30 minutes. Their menu is 19 freakin’ pages long! It was so hard to choose. I finally decided on a Spicy Chicken Chipotle Pasta. After the meal Shelly and I decided we would get a slice of cheesecake to bring home. About 2 pages of just cheesecakes...this was going to be hard. We ended up getting a Dutch Apple Streusel Cheesecake. Yes it was delicious when we had it later in the evening.
Our final stop of the night....The Signature Room on the 95th for a night cap. It was a lounge/bar/restaurant on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building. It was a busy night...but I bet its always busy. We finally got a table after a 50min wait or so I would say. It was close to the window and the view was amazing and actually kind of breathtaking. Shelly ordered a glass of Champagne, while I got a Lake Shore Martini, which included Grey Goose Vodka, Chombard, and Champagne. Both drinks were 12$, but worth it. This was the type of bar I enjoyed being at. Expensive drink in a nice atmosphere, beautiful view and good company is always fun for me. Shelly and I talked for the next hour, while sipping on our drinks. Our talk was serious, funny, interesting, and exciting. We then took a walk around the Signature Room and took a couple pictures of the city and of us.
It was time to head back to Evanston. We got on the L and it smelled like someone defecated all over the place. We met some Freshmen for Loyola and joked with them about it. Somehow Shelly knew they were Freshmen right away....probably that psychology major she just got. After 3 stops we all decided there was no way we were going to be able to survive in these conditions. At the 4th stop we jumped off that car and ran to the next one. Smelled a lot better. We got home not too late this time but we were exhausted. We passed out pretty quickly...well after looking for speedos for me and looking at some other fun things....
Sunday:
We woke up at 11:30am still tired. Today we were going to stay in Evanston and tour. We also decided that this was going to be the day we do a little sunbathing. We got our swimsuits ready and headed over to Subway to get lunch while on the beach. On the way to the beach Shelly gave me a nice tour of Northwestern. Where her dorm the first two years was, the library, the student center, and the infamous It is a very beautiful college. Very green. It’s nothing like UW-Madison. And Northwestern is packed together unlike spread out Madison. She also showed me where she works. Her office is the one of the best in the building. Two large windows to bring a lot of light into the room, her own computer/s, and the office itself is large. She’s got a pretty sweet set up. I guess her office is better than her boss’.
Making our way to the beach was a little hard with construction all over the place. There was actually no way to get over to the beach, so we decided to set up on the rocks along the lake shore. The skyline was visible to our right and the water did not end. We picked out a nice flat rock and made it ours. We ate lunch and sunbathed. We were there for about 2 hours or so...time just flew because it was so fun. As I got burned we had a long conversation with many tangents. Our conversation was held our a very wide spectrum....deep, humorous, informative, etc. Who knows how we do it, but we can talk about anything and keep finding more to talk about...I love it.
We met up with Seth Meyer and Chris, Sam and Matt (Shelly’s friends) at Blind Faith Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant and had an amazingly good meal. Sam tried to test me...he looked at the bill and asked me to guess the total within 2 cents. If I guessed correctly he would buy my meal. I kind of memorized the menu somehow and guessed. I guessed 86.54$. The bill was actually 100.98$, but I didn’t know that gratuity was already included. So we took out the gratuity and found that the bill was 86.62$....I was 8 cents off. Damn it. Shelly was pretty close to with a guess of 87$. But no free meal....oh well.
Shelly invited everyone up for some wine/beer. Chris, Sam and Matt came up. We all had a drink...Shelly poured me two glasses of wine...and I was drunk. Yeah, I know, I’m a lightweight. We all tried Shelly’s new moist heat neck rest she just got in the mail. Yeah, all I can say is that it was weird and kinda smelled bad at first....but it got better.
They didn’t stay long (we think they may have gone out for the 3rd night in a row). It was getting late, but Shelly and I decided to pop in the movie Big (with Tom Hanks) and make it a late night of movies. We passed out pretty late....and we had spinning class to go to in the morning. Eh, it was the weekend....gotta make it fun somehow. And I know cycling tired has given me some of my better performances.
Monday:
Ok so the staying up late and watching movies kinda made us tired, but we still got up at about 10:30 or so. Shelly had a free guest pass to the gym so we were going to go to a spinning class. When we got there we found out that they changed the schedule for Labor Day and there was no spinning class at noon. So we decided on the next best thing...pilates. Ok all I can say is this class kicked my ass. I swear to god it was harder than riding my bike. I got done and I could barely walk....I’m going to do pilates more. Thanks for taking me to that Shelly!
After our grueling workout we ate at Wild Oats...which is exactly the same as Whole Foods. I packed my stuff up after lunch and then we took a nap before I had to catch the Metra into Chicago at 5pm. Shelly and I said bye to each other before I got on the train and parted ways....
And now I’m here. Sorry I wrote so much...you probably got bored. Well, I wasn’t. I’m somewhere between Rockford and Madison. I’ll be home soon. I really don’t want to be. This weekend was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. Shelly made the weekend really fun and she was a good hostess and it was really good to see her again and hang out with her for 4 straight days. I miss the weekend already....but now I have to get ready to go to school tomorrow.
I’ll have some pictures up later. I had to use Shelly’s camera, because I do not have an operating camera right now. I’m looking for one...I’ll probably get one this week. But Shelly has all the pictures from this weekend....I’ll get them sometime soon.
I may be making plans to go back down to Evanston in about 3 weeks....maybe sooner. We’ll be able to do some of the things we weren’t able to do this weekend. Chicago is too big to do everything. But this weekend was filled to the brim. I can’t wait to go back.....
I wrote alot, but I hope I didn’t forget anything.....
Ciao ciao....
Waitey
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