Chi-Town Weekend

I went to visit my friend, Alexis, in Chicago last weekend. It was great although it started off not so great. My flight out of Newark was delayed (big surprise) by 2 hrs. I got notice of the delay before I left for the airport, but we were still required to be at the gate on time. Meh. I got a lot of knitting done.

I arrived in Chicago around 10:30pm and Alexis’s boyfriend picked me up. He sounds uncannily like my friend from Wisconsin, Greg. We took a bunch of backroads to avoid traffic. Aaron owns a pretty cool condo in a greystone. When we got there Alexis was asleep on the couch, but she got up and made me fondue! I never knew there was such a thing as fondue-cheese-in-a-bag but it was pretty good.

Saturday I was up early and showered, so when Alexis got up to walk her dog I went with her. She gave me the local tour. We came back and made pancakes. Then we got on the bus and headed downtown with the idea of going to the Museum of Contemporary Art. That never happened. Instead we did a lot of window shopping and hunting for a pizza place to get some deep dish where the wait wasn’t an hour. Damn tourists! (oops) Michigan Avenue is crazy.

We ended up getting some yummy pizza before heading home. One the way we stopped and I bought us some fancy cupcakes for later. Alexis loves cupcakes. By the time we got home we were all beat and so we vegged out on the couch for most of the evening. We ordered up some sushi and watched SNL, Rob & Big, The Usual Suspects etc.

Sunday Alexis and I headed Evanston to check out the Armenian Church. When we got there for mass it was entirely empty other then the priest and altar boys. Neither of speak Armenian and so we had no idea when we were supposed to stand or sit. I honestly know Catholic mass way better. We were trying to follow along in the liturgy book but we were never sure what page we were on. Most bigger churches have a deli counter thing that tells you the page number. As the mass went on more people showed up.

Afterwards lots of people came up and introduced themselves. They all thought we were students from Northwestern. We also got dragged into the brunch. That’s one of the nice things about orthodox churches - food after mass! The deacon that Alexis had spoken to made us introduce ourselves to everyone. They were very nice but there were maybe 8 people under the age of 50 and that’s counting children.

Then we drove to see the Baha’i Temple. It was really cool. We could have gone into it but they were doing their services and we didn’t want to get stuck in there for the whole time. Then we headed back downtown and dropped Lex’s car off in the garage. We did some walking in Millennium Park and saw the Giant Chrome Bean and the Spitting Video Faces. I’m sure these have other more proper names.

Afterwards we walked back down Michigan Ave and stopped at Nordstrom. I bought a bunch of socks. Then we were off to the Drake Hotel to meet Alexis’s friend for high tea. We had a table at the fountain. I got Earl Grey tea and a mimosa. We were served finger sandwiches, scones, and banana bread followed by some pastries. It was fun and after 2 pots of tea I was stuffed.

Alexis whisked me back to the airport for my 7:15pm flight. I almost finished my knitting project on the flight back and my we arrived 45 min EARLY! Amazing.

Good weekend. Feel free to check out my slideshow on flickr. Not many pics as my camera battery was dying.

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