"I just flew in from the windy city..."

For Christmas Jason's sister Ginger gave us plane tickets to fly anywhere Southwest goes and so for Spring Break we decided to visit Chicago. We were there for five days and we had a really great time! We got to stay at the Palmer House, the oldest hotel in America now owned by Hilton, which is a gorgeous hotel (especially the lobby). We were only looking to find a cheap hotel to stay at but we got an amazing deal which we couldn't pass up. The first couple of days we walked around a lot just looking at the city which was cool but it was raining most of the time. The bottom half of our pants were soaked and we were freezing! The rest of the time we went to some museums, to the top of the Sears Tower, the free Lincoln Park Zoo, Wrigley Field, paid homage to some Ferris Bueller sites, and we ate at a bunch of delicious sandwich places and a lot of great deep dish pizza! One of our favorite things to do was getting on buses or the 'L' and getting off at random places and seeing what was around.

Some things that are distinctly Chicago:

- Public places do not have 'Restroom' signs, they simply say 'Toilets.' Jason thought that was funny.

- You cannot find Dr. Pepper anywhere!

- Every pizza place is deep dish

- A lot of the homeless beggers were very agressive and they would yell at us if we didn't give them anything!

(There are a lot of pictures to follow!)

This is the fancy lobby of our hotel

This is a sculpture called Cloud Gate by famous artist Anish Kapoor, which resembles a giant reflective bean, at Millenium Park near our hotel. It was weird but fun!

It wasn't really that cold until the last day when it was in the 20's and very windy!!

Me over the Chicago River on Michigan Ave.

Our favorite sandwich place- Potbelly! We went to three different restaurants and they all had a great atmosphere! Our favorite was our first one we went to where the background music was a guy singing with his guitar. He was really good and both of us didn't even realize it wasn't the radio at first.

Jason and I by lake Michigan. The lake was frozen!

We took the subway mostly everywhere. What was great was we bought a card at the beginning that can be used unlimited for the subway, the 'El' and bus for the whole week!

The city at night! There wasn't a whole lot to do there at night like New York so we usually ate dinner and then just walked around!

We went to the Field museum of natural history and they had a Pirate exhibition which was really interesting. Supposedly this is the only real pirate treasure to have ever been found.

This is me trying my best to copy the Ferris Bueller scene with the Georges Seurat painting 'Sunday Afternoon on La Gran Jatte.'
At the science/industry museum there was an actual WWII German submarine that we were able to go inside! We weren't able take pictures inside but it was amazing to see!

This was at my favorite pizza restaurant we ate at called "Gino's East of Chicago". The walls were all covered with graffitti (purposefully) and it had low lighting and was very hip. They had signed pictures of celebrities that ate there and what they ordered. The pizza was delicious too!

There were squirrels in all the parks and the last day I fed one a cookie! He was a little pig and kept wanting more!

When we were walking down the street one evening by Wrigley field we came across a bunch of people and media standing around. We asked someone what was going on and they said U2 is playing there and everyone is waiting around for them. We decided to hang out there just in case we could catch a glimpse of them. Well after we were there about 15 minutes a car pulled up and everyone got very excited and was like- its Adam! We only know the Edge and Bono so we just got pictures of him but we weren't crazy like everyone else. Then about 5 minutes later Bono shows up and he comes out and signs autographs and takes pictures with a lot of people in the crowd! We weren't that far back and I probably could've pushed my way up and got a picture or autograph and I wish I had! (The girl right in front of me got her picture with Bono!) It was still very exciting being that close and I got a bunch of pictures of him. We were probably the least crazy in the group though and there were some people who waited for hours for them and drove around looking for the place (it was a private concert.) We just happened to be in the right place at the right time!

You can see the bottom of my head in this picture!

We had our 2 year wedding anniversary when we were there on March 10. Crazy its already been 2 years!!