Chicago, We came (no pun intended)

This last weekend in chicago was amazing. The whole idea of going somewhere with no plan was a brilliant move. Here's just a brief post of Kristen and I's experiences.

The hotel was great. We wanted to say away from chain hotels, so we decided on Hotel Blake. The neighborhood was awesome (Printer's Row-comparable to Milwaukee's Thrid Ward). We were 3 blocks away from the Sears Tower, and one block from the El train which we used a lot.

Some of the touristy things we did were Millenium/Grant Parks. I was really looking forward to the 'bean'. I've seen so many facebook pictures of this thing, and was a little bit dissapointed that I never got a chance to see it - especially only living 1.5 hours away from Chi. We walked the Magnificent Mile. For anyone that doesn't know... that's Michigan Avenue. It's lined with tons of high end stores and restaurants. We went into Armani Exchange, and they had a DJ mixing tracks behind the glass in the store. A little weird at first, but a unique experience. The John Hancock observatory was a lot better than the Sears Tower, in my opinion. We ate at the Signature Room (which had okay food) the view was great. There's also a lounge one floor up with 360 views of the city. The drinks were expensive, but you pay for experience, i think.

The downtown nightlife wasn't too exciting for us. We went to the Division/Rush Avenues Nightlife district and it was way too crowded. Kind of like water street in Milwaukee. Our favorite place was in Lincoln Park area, a couple of miles north of downtown. Kincades is a neat bar under the EL train. We made friends both nights there, got free drinks, and free taxi rides back to the hotel. Enough said.

I don't want to go into too much detail about this trip, but for anyone that is on a budget, and not looking to spend thousands of dollars on flights and attractions, Chicago is a great place to visit and have a good time. I definately see myself back there - SOON!

the one & only
t0m3k