{"id":956,"date":"2015-10-15T20:53:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/?p=956"},"modified":"2015-10-30T19:46:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T19:46:37","slug":"we-love-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/2015\/10\/15\/we-love-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"We Love Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems like forever ago now that\u00a0our youngest daughter graduated from college and we helped her move to Chicago.\u00a0 That was certainly a memorable trip, not just because our daughter was moving to\u00a0a big city, but because it was our first trip to Chicago.\u00a0 Amazingly enough, we’d probably\u00a0flown through Chicago\u00a0a hundred times, but never actual spent any time in Chicago.\u00a0 We have been back several times since and every visit, regardless of the time\u00a0of year, has been wonderful.\u00a0 Obviously, seeing our daughter is always the highlight of the trip, but there is so much to see and\u00a0do in Chicago that it makes for a wonderful getaway.\u00a0 We’ve even been there during winter, which can be pretty cold, but we still had a wonderful time.<\/p>\n

\"Chicago<\/a>
Chicago Skyline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"View<\/a>
View of Lake Michigan from the Drake Hotel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our first trip, however, was quite the experience.\u00a0\u00a0We decided to make the sixteen hour drive in a single trip,\u00a0driving our daughter’s SUV with a trailer in tow.\u00a0 We spent the\u00a0night\u00a0before the drive in Boulder so that we could make as\u00a0early of a start as possible.\u00a0 We arrived at her apartment at 6:00 a.m. where\u00a0the expectation\u00a0was that the trailer would be packed and her and her new roommates would be ready to go.\u00a0\u00a0Needless to say, they weren’t ready when we arrived, so our morning started with scrambling to finish packing and making sure that the apartment was cleaned up.\u00a0 An hour later than we had hoped, we were on the road.\u00a0 The drive started out fine as we made our way across Colorado, through Nebraska, and into Iowa.\u00a0 After driving for about thirteen hours, the highway suddenly came to a crawl.\u00a0 After checking the road information, we found that there was a bad accident several miles ahead and the highway was shutdown.\u00a0 Traffic was being rerouted to a rural single lane road in order to get around the accident.\u00a0 After two hours crawling along at an excruciating slow pace, we were finally passed the accident and on our way again.\u00a0 The rest of the drive was fine, but after the late start and delay, it was now nineteen hours later and 2:30 in the morning.<\/p>\n

\"Lake<\/a>
Lake Michigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Downtown<\/a>
Downtown Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We drove to the Drake Hotel, where we were staying, and let the kids take the car and trailer to their new apartment.\u00a0 Exhausted from the time on the road, we went to the front desk to check in.\u00a0 We were told that the room we had reserved was flooded and they needed to move us to a different style of room that was smaller than the one we requested.\u00a0 Our response, “does it have a bed?”, that was all we cared about at this point.\u00a0 The receptionist told us to leave our bags in the room in the morning when we left to unpack the trailer and help our daughter move into her new apartment and the hotel staff would move us to our room, once it was dried out.\u00a0 So, the following morning, we helped our daughter move in and headed back to the hotel in the afternoon to take a nap since we’d only had about five hours of sleep at this point.\u00a0 We went back to the front desk to get our new keys and were told that the room still wasn’t dry, so they had put us in a different room.\u00a0 We took our keys and headed to the elevator to go to the room.\u00a0 As we walked down the hallway, we realized that they had put us into a junior suite.\u00a0 The room was massive, with a living room area as well as a small dining area. It was a corner room, with views of Lake Michigan from the large windows, and the staff had left a bottle of champagne with some fruit, cheese, and crackers for our inconvenience.\u00a0 The rest of our trip was\u00a0looking up.<\/p>\n

\"Junior<\/a>
Junior Suite at the Drake Hotel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Drake<\/a>
Drake Hotel from the Beach of Lake Michigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next day we were off to do normal tourist stuff.\u00a0 We took an architectural river tour where we learned that Chicago is quite proud of being the home of the first skyscrapers as well as the varying styles of skyscrapers throughout the city.\u00a0 We went to the top of the Willis Tower (it is still the Sears Tower to us) and went to several restaurants, including Ditka’s, which we have returned to many times.\u00a0 The next day we went to the Navy Pier and walked the beach as well as visited the Field Museum of Natural History.\u00a0 We went to Millennium Park and saw the “Bean”, which is really called the Cloud Gate.\u00a0 We even walked the Miracle Mile and wondered in and out of shops, even the designer stores with prices so astronomical that no normal person could possibly afford them.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Chicago Bean<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Architectural<\/a>
Architectural River Tour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the end, after a stressful start, our first trip to Chicago helped us fall in love with the city.\u00a0 We have been back several times, usually flying, but we did drive one other time, however we spread the trip over two days.\u00a0 We tell everyone that Chicago is a “small big city”, meaning that the people are friendlier than cities on the east coast, but there is as much to do, see, and attend as any other city that we’ve lived in or visited.\u00a0 Even if our daughter moved away from Chicago, we’d still make a point of travelling there every now and then and take advantage of everything the city has to offer.<\/p>\n

\"Navy<\/a>
Navy Pier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Gift<\/a>
Gift from the Hotel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Chicago\"<\/a>
Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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