Chicago Part 2

Well, I'm just now sitting down to post the rest of my trip to Chicago because it has been a pretty full week, but I figured I'd better post because at church Tuesday night a friend said, "What are you doing here? I thought you were in Chicago.  There was no blog post to tell me you were back."  What a nut.  But in case anyone was confused, I am no longer in Illinois.  I am currently spending a little time in Missouri catching up with friends and family and working on healing this ankle up.  

Now, back to Chicago...the city where dreams come true, where you can see a great show, eat, sleep and be merry and you don't have to feel bad about not being productive and the calories don't count.  Ok, maybe that's not totally true, but for a weekend away it was perfection.

Since we had stayed out a little bit later the first night seeing Once, we slept in on day two.  We slept way in.  It was lunch time when we finally got out of the hotel, so we decided to just go for it and get some Chicago style pizza.  We also discovered that we had packed practically the same outfit which kind of cracks me up.  Great minds think alike.  We ended up at Gino's East.  There is writing everywhere, it was crazy to me how many people were represented.

We were super hungry, and of course the pizza takes quite a while to cook, so we ordered appetizers (calories don't count in Chicago, so don't judge us). Here is the aftermath.

We were really glad to have ordered that later when we found out that our pizza had accidentally been given to someone else and they were going to have to make us a new one.  As a bonus though, we got our pizza for free.  Thanks Gino's. And here's the main event. It was worth the wait. 

So good. 

Next we did a little shopping on the Magnificent Mile and since my ankle was getting tired we had to stop at Ghirardelli for brownies and coffee.  I will not post pictures of that though because it's kind of creepy how excited I look posing with a brownie.  

We had made plans to see one of our friends from college later that night, so after a nap (I told you this place was wonderful); we met up with him.  We ended up going to a Japanese BBQ called Gyu-Kaku. Yum.

We had already ordered our mochi when conversation turned to cake and ice cream and we decided to go to Portillo's and get Chocolate Cake Shakes, so we ended up having to have two desserts.  Isn't that awful/wonderful?

It was the perfect end to an evening of catching up with an old friend. Thanks to Bekah for documenting this moment of bliss. 

P.S. I can't believe you passed on that shake, it was heaven in a cup.

The next day was really sad, because we had to leave...I might have shed a few tears because the trip was much too short.  But I comforted myself with dim sum. We met up with a semi-cousin (a cousin of her cousin) of Bekah's and had brunch in Chinatown.  

The place we were originally planning on going was closed for remodeling, so we had to walk around a bit to find someplace else.  I have no idea what it was called, but the place we ended up was packed.  I took this as a good sign.  Although we were told it would be a 25 minute wait, it turned out to be more like an hour.  It was okay though, we were in no hurry and were able to sit and chat while we waited.  

Again, worth the wait.  I think if I lived in Chicago and had to live the hurry up and wait lifestyle all the time it might get old, but it was fine for vacation.  I digress.  The point of this story is dim sum. And it was delicious. 

And with that, we said goodbye to Chicago.  Until next time at least.