Whirlwind trip

Friday - Got off of work early to catch my flight at 3'ish. Yvette picked me up at the airport and we headed straight to a retirement party for one of her friends. Kinda crazy because I had actually met a few of the people that were there for the celebration... they had attended a convention in Denver a few years back. We had a late dinner at a Mexican restaurant and I was pleasantly surprised. You might not know this about me, but I don't usually choose to go out for Mexican food.

Saturday - Stopped for coffee at Starbucks on the way to a movie. Yes, we went to a movie and I am totally okay with that! It was a no pressure weekend and this fit in perfectly! We saw "Slumdog Millionaire", a movie we had both been wanting to see. I highly recommend it by the way. The weather was beautiful. Way nicer than I had been planning on. Then it was time for lunch at Gino's East. Okay, if I had anything on my list - it as deep dish pizza. I introduced Yvette, and the bartender to an "Italian Margarita" - yummmm. Afterwards, we walked around the Magnificent Mile area, shopping til we were dropping. We headed back to the hotel for just a minute before we decided to visit the Sears Tower. The view at night from the Skydeck was beautiful - all lit up. We started walking back to the hotel and I'm not gonna lie, here's where the weather I had anticipated kicked in. I fell down at some point as we were crossing the street. Limping a little bit, we found a bar on the corner (Boss) and stopped in for a drink - and an appetizer (it was dinner time and we hadn't eaten yet). By the time we left, I felt fine and we walked back to the hotel - where we stopped in to the lobby bar for dessert... and a drink.

Sunday - Carlos, a friend of Yvette's picked us up and took us for lunch in a Puerto Rican neighborhood. We had a sandwich made with plantains as the 'bread'. It was delicious. Really, one of the highlights to my trip to try something new like this. After lunch - he took us on a tour of Chicago pointing out all the highlights I probably would have known to look for if I had planned this trip at all :) He dropped us back at the hotel in the late afternoon. We had to stop by a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins. They were on every block, I swear. And then we thought about getting tickets to a show, but on a stop before the ticket booth, the car got towed! Can you believe it? I still can't. Yvette didn't let it ruin the day - we got the car out of impound and continued to look for Oprah's studio and then drove out to Barack Obama's home. It was dark and the street was policed off, so we didn't see much - but hey, we can still say we went. We stopped by China town on the way back and then back to the hotel before going out for dinner. We planned to go to La Frontera (a restaurant by Rick Bayless) - but it was closed! Biscuits!! so we went back to the hotel and ate at the Weber Grill, and watched the end of the Super Bowl. Even though it wasn't what we had planned, it was still really good.

Monday - Up at 3:30am. Dropped Yvette off at home and then off to work. Boy, that was a long day... Totally worth it though.