Christi and I just recently got back from our three days in Chicago. That city is absolutely amazing. Even though dad makes fun of us for going somewhere cold during spring break, we both enjoy it an awful lot. Here's what happened:

Day 1 (Sunday):
After being awoken at 5:41 a.m. to Yarmer's text messaging, Christi and I finally heading towards Eppley around 7:00 a.m. to catch our early flight. With doing so, we booked Southwest (how else would you fly to Chicago?) and printed off our boarding passes 24 hours prior to take off. This accompanied by the fact that we just took carry-on's was worth its weight in gold. Seriously, the next time that you fly somewhere, get your boarding pass online, and don't mess with the airport hassle.

We both made our way past the metal detectors and boarded the plane. As most of you know, Sunday was not a good day for weather in the midwest (or in the southwest if you ask Ben). Our plane experienced a bunch of turbulence and Christi was not feeling so hot after we landed. Thanks to the many rough times in the sky when my dad used to fly (not his fault of course, the weather!), I have become used to turbulence, and have acquired a knack for not letting this bother me. Although, this did come at a cost as there were many landings that my parents had to clean up the back of the plane when I was younger. Erica can attest to this as well, as she was always in the back with me with a barf bag on hand.

After that was said and done, we boarded the "L" and headed off to our hotel. In the opposite fashion of last year, I did not get us lost this time, and our hotel was in an ideal location. We went to check in, and go figure, they put us on the 21^st floor. With this alone, I knew it was going to be a great trip. So we unpacked and made our way across the green river. Thanks to St. Patty's day and the fact that I can't remember seeing the river before the last couple of years, I can't even imagine that it is any color other than green:



From here we made our way to Gino's for lunch. I've spent a year away from my favorite pizza place, and the hour or so that we were in Chicago was far too long to wait to eat it. Needless to say, we ordered a medium, and Christi finished a couple of slices, and I was able to devour the rest. After we were done here, we had to let our stomachs rest back at the hotel for a half hour or so. By this time, Christi was really relaxed, and I was eager to keep going. Actually, as you read on, I was much eager to do something that I've been waiting to do forever ... and by forever, I mean the last two years.

This brings us to "the bean."




I really wanted to see this marvel of art the last time that we were in town, but they were cleaning it, and fixing some cracks because of the cold weather. Well, lucky us this time around because we got to see it. And if you ask Christi, we saw way too much of it. I compared it to a piece of art by Picasso, and she told me that looking at it for 5 minutes was much to long. Anyways, I stayed there and took some awesome pictures, and then we left to a different part of Millennium Park. After a couple of minutes away, I couldn't take it any more, and had to go back. Christi was very reluctant and we actually did get some nice pictures there.

After that, we took a long and quite cold stroll down further south to the Shedd Aquarium. This was an AWESOME PLACE. They have some pretty cool sections set up down there. As we were walking through, Christi said that the aquarium would never meet her expectations because they didn't have live whales. No more than a minute after she said that, we saw a sign that inevitably said "whales", and needless to say, Christi was very happy.




Once this was done, we walked all the way back to Millennium Park to hail a cab. This once again is remarkable because this is only the 3^rd cab ride I've been in all of my life (2 of the 3 were in Chicago). We decided to take the cab because a) we were both cold and b) we were late for meeting up with the gang from Nebraska.

We took the cab to Ed Debevic's (which was a bust) to meet up with Tom, Jason, Jake and his girlfriend Al. We had a good time just sitting around and talking, and then laughing at Jake at the end of the night when we found out we didn't get charged for our beer, and he didn't order one (I guess he got screwed out of a free one the night before as well).

Once that was done, we went back to the hotel room because we were both bloated from all of the food. On the way back it started pouring, but we weren't that far from our hotel when it started, so we got lucky. Here we waited for Mike's phone call to go out on the town (no call Mike!), so we just fell asleep and ventured on to the next day ....

Day 2 (Monday):
We set out to have goals from the very beginning of this day. First and foremost we were going to go back down to Navy Pier since that is where I proposed last year (yes, exactly a year to the day). It was nice and windy by the water, but it didn't matter as we got back down there. We had a great time, and probably shot the best pictures of the trip down there.

After that, we hopped on a free trolley back downtown to do some shopping. Here we walked, and walked, and walked, and walked around .... you can sense how my excitement for this part of the day is still growing. Actually, it really wasn't that bad, and we did end up getting some pretty cool stuff. Here by 'we' I mean that Christi bought some cool stuff. Once this was done, our feet were tired, so we rested them at Christi's favorite pizza place, Giordano's. This has to be some of the best (if not the best) thin crust pizza in the world. Note that Gino's is still better all around!

After this, I was on a quest to buy some new shoes. The location where I thought I would find my gold mine was at Diesel. Boy was I wrong. They didn't carry men's shoes at this store (very strange). After some more wandering and more shopping, I wanted to go venture up the street further for more shoe places. Christi saw 'Aldo' and said it was a good place. She was right. I found a nice pair of black dress shoes that I didn't even have to pay for! (Christi owed me a pair from Christmas). This was all fine and dandy, but before we entered, I saw a tall scraggly looking fellow down the street and told Christi it was Santino Rice from the second season of Project Runway. She took me serious, and I just laughed it off as we went in and looked at shoes.

Once I had a nice new set of kicks, we went to my beloved Bentley dealer in Chicago (where they yelled at me last year when I pulled my camera out of my bag). This year they had a nice big sign for me as I entered the door. In our midst of looking at Porsche's, Bentley's, Lamborghini's and Ferrari's we saw that 'Santino' character again. This time, we were positive that it was really him. He was talking to the sales clerk about some of the cars, and Christi and I snuck past the velvet ropes (great security) to get closer to the designer. Everything on TV was the same about him: Very tall, weird clothes, horrible beard, and a very deep booming voice. We left the dealership (I'm guessing they assumed we wouldn't buy anything) right behind Santino and his friend. We actually followed them for 10 blocks or so. I kept pleading to Christi to run up and at least say 'hi' and get a picture, but she was pretty insistent that we did not go do that. So, it was at least cool that we saw him, kinda car shopped with him, and then followed him for a little bit in Chicago:



Once this was done we went home and relaxed/changed for our nice dinner that night. We went to the same place that we went to exactly a year earlier, Carmine's. Still, Christi and I have many thanks over to Dave and Nyla for this recommendation a year earlier. We absolutely love this place. So, we had a great dinner here, then looked up a couple of more shops, and then walked back to the hotel in the cold once again leading us to the final day ....

Day 3 (Tuesday):
On our last day in the city, we got up bright and early to get a jump on the rest of our lives. Our first stop was to the Luxe Homes showrooms. This 18+ story building was absolutely amazing for different modern and contemporary kitchens and bathrooms to put in your home. It really was quite fun to walk around and decide on things that would look good later in life when we could actually afford them.

Once done here, we went to Room and Board to look at more stuff for this future home that we hope to one day build. We didn't find that much cool stuff here as we did last year. Maybe it was just a little bit downplayed after being at the Luxe. Once done here, we sat down for a nice long meal at Big Bowl where we ate with Adam and Jenni last year. This Asian food really hit the spot once again. So after we were done eating, we departed on the "L" back to good ol' Lincoln where I write this to you right now.

If you made it this far in reading this post, I am very proud and honored. Maybe let me know, and I'll buy you a drink for listening to our spring break trip.