The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

Every good trip begins with good planning (or at least that is my firm belief).

I know many of you think what a wonderful person I must have been to give my wife the gift of non-planning (and it’s true, I am a wonderful person, humble too) but secretly I used that trip as a covert way to plan for the family version.

I know, sorry to ruin your pedestal opinion of me.

However, with that little confession out of the way, I began with vigor to plan Chicago II: The Revenge. To have a successful journey one must be well equipped. Saturday began that equipping with the boys. We took a trip to Wal*Mart (bastion of evil that it is) and bought Dafyd and Jace some new backpacks, some hip pouches (Jace hates the name “fanny packs” and the British just laugh when they hear that – Thank you Kevin Smith for ruining that for me), disposable cameras (so the boys can take pictures themselves of their journey), extra underwear (as a 9 & 11 year you can never have too many clean pairs), sun glasses (because hey you might as well look cool while doing whatever it is you do) and a few other odds and ends.

Step two to a successful journey is the planning. A well thought out plan allows for better and more efficient packing, the ability of anticipate for the unexpected, better manage your budget, and to make sure you have the .60 cents exact change you need on hand to get off the toll road. Thanks to my detailed planning, I have maps printed off to our every destination, I’ve grouped events by proximity, and I know how much we are going to have to pay in parking at the Museum of Science and Industry. In addition, when it came time for packing we could plan outfits (I know, I am teaching my sons about color matching and outfits – the really scary part is that if you’ve ever seen me dress, I’m certainly not the person to be showing them that kind of stuff).

Every great journey should also be one that educates the journeyman. We taught the boys how to match clothes, how to pack, and they are getting an opportunity to express their inner artist as they are using the cameras to capture things they feel is important or cool. I cannot wait to get back to develop them to see the world through their eyes. Me? I am learning patience (I don’t think we ever get done learning that), how to find moments of instruction, and most importantly, when to keep my mouth shut and let them discover on their own in a deeper fashion than I can ever vocalize.

Step three is execution. As in try not to kill each other . Just kidding. We have the suit cases and back packs loaded (yes, I said suit cases, but it’s not because my wife over packs, because of my excellent planning we were able to divide our stuff into days so we are able to drag less crap around as we move from Buffalo to Schamburg to Chicago.

All in all I am super excited about this trip (and I know the boys are too – when I found Jace sitting down stairs in his undies, back pack and sun glasses, I knew he was ready to go).

I will keep you posted as our days progress.

This is from the official Jason Mraz YouTube site… man vs. tour (and a little glimpse of why I love Jason Mraz)

Sunday was our last day in Chicago and we decided to end our trip the same way we began it, by going to the House of Blues.

While we were dining there on Thursday we noticed that they had advertisements for their Sunday Gospel Brunch and so we thought what the heck, this beats trying to go to the Seventeenth Church of Christ on the corner (which is really a Christian Science Church – now see, that could have been exciting).

It took some help from the front desk to get things worked out since the only tickets left were for the 12:30 sitting, but we managed to get it worked out and picked up tickets on Friday. The most shocking part of the program was the cost at $46 bucks a person, which was crazy wow. Later on though we found out that they charge that much so they can give to all the various out reach programs that HOB offers to the city of Chicago and it’s youth.

I’ve got to say that aside from the slightly cramped quarters we had a blast! It was like eating a buffet at Black Baptist church. The quasi-preaching was good, the food was very good and the music was great. With the exception of the dad having some blood Mary’s (though someone it seemed appropriate) while his kids made a mess, I would go back in a heart beat.

Thus ended our trip to Chicago.

We got home around 6:30 to find a couple of copies of Harry Potter waiting for us, so if you don’t see me for a couple of days you know what I’m up to.

Stay tuned as next week we return for Chicago II: The Revenge (where we take the boys on a completely different trip to the same city). As always we will keep you posted with stories and pictures…

I can almost smell the taste of the victory!

Day three began much like day two did, Michelle enjoying the opportunity to sleep in without Link and Flash doing their best to wake us up and me enjoying the free internet from Hotel Sax (not Hotel Sex, which led to a rather interesting discussion with Michelle’s father: “He took my daughter where?”). Duce (aka The Other John, and John #2) from work got me hooked playing an online game called Tribal Wars , so I had to check on my village and fend off the bad guys. Plus, don’t tell Michelle but I was secretly planning behind her back – some addictions are just two strong to ignore.

By the time we were up and ready to face the day the lunching hour had arrived. This again was one of those things where my knack for planning would have come in handy. Here it was 12:30, the show started at 2:00, so what do we do? We could walk in the wrong direction (which after yesterday’s all day walk fest didn’t sound thrilling especially since I was in dress shoes), we could hope we could get into one of the nicer restaurants and get done in time. We could stop at McDonalds (yuck, and not in a dress, I mean I wasn’t in a dress Michelle was, but you get the idea) or hope to find something.

See this is why I macro-plan.

After some discussion we decided to give BIN 36 a try (since it was right there, and if lunch took a while we could easily catch a cab and still make it to the theater on time.

I’m not sure that I’m ready to form an opinion of BIN 36. It certainly wasn’t what I expected, but we may have done it wrong after reading their website. Either way, the part of BIN 36 were we found ourselves seemed to be focused on cheese and wine… and that was pretty much it. Out of a multi-paged menu they had like 4 lines that consisted of the “Tavern Menu”. I wasn’t overly thrilled.

We found something that at least I thought might be consumable. But I thought, what the heck, so I just started putting something together they call a flight plan, which is really a cool concept. A flight plan is where you choose any 4 wines from your menu and they put them on a labeled sheet and you get to try them. By default they’ve already paired similar wines together but you’re not obliged to stick with that.

It was kind of fun. We ended up enjoying this Chenin Blanc from Yves Breussin. They allowed us to take home the label tags so that we can order it online from them day or night. The food wasn’t anything I’d blog home about, but if left us either content that we could wait until dinner or nauseous enough that we were no longer hungry.

Since the hour was getting late and we’d just had 4 2.5oz glasses of wine I didn’t think it was best idea to drag Michelle several blocks in heels (again, I wasn’t were them). So we caught a cab to the theater.

While I’ve touted much of these reports about Michelle not letting plan anything in advance (okay, so maybe I wasn’t forbidden per say, but you get the idea), I did book tickets in advance so that we could see Wicked at the Ford Oriental Theater (oh, and I did book reservations for dinner – that was part of me planning behind her back that I mentioned earlier).

I’ve been in quite a few theaters in my day and I have to say that this one was simply gorgeous inside. But like all great shows this one was filled with the hurry up and wait stages. Everyone needs to stand outside until we open the doors to the theater. Then you flood through several hundred people who then have to hurry up and wait until they open the doors to the auditorium. I did pick up the $20 program that they offered. This is one of those traditions that Michelle and I started back in Vegas – every show we go to we get the program. It’s a nice way to remember what we saw since we try to be law abiding citizens and keep our cameras locked away.

After a short bathroom break and some more waiting we made our way inside. Wow, it was just as stunning as the lobby. But even better than the theater was the show itself.

I never thought I would be a musical kind of guy. I mean Sound of Music, Fiddler on the roof, those TV productions ALWAYS made me cringe, but I find myself liking them more and more. Maybe they’re just getting better (or that I’m getting older). The story was well done (though I’ve yet to read the book by Gregory Maguire, but it certainly made me want to. The music was great (I teared up more than once) and visually it was top notched.

I totally loved the young lady playing Galinda (with a Ga). She was very close to a blond Cheri Oteri and a little Molly Shannon tossed in for good measure). The flips of her hair and the way she kicked her leg up now and then Great stuff. Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) was a great character. I loved, “No one Morns the Wicked”, “Dancing Through Life”, “Popular”, and “Defying Gravity” (which still makes me eyes leak a little). I could rave on and on about this production, but no matter where you see it, if you get the chance it was worth every penny we paid.

Speaking of every penny we paid that leads us to dinner.

Thankfully we were all dressed up with some place to go and we headed back towards Hotel Sax (again, not to be confused with Hotel Sex, which would have made this an entirely different type of blog entry). When we had back to Chicago, I would definitely stay there again. It was well located had a slew of wonderful options steps from their entrance and they had cool TVs in the room, but that’s not the point, the point is that we headed to Smith & Wollensky.

Smith & Wollensky opened on the corner of 49th and Third in Manhattan almost 30 years ago. Since then they’ve opened up in Chicago, Miami Beach, D.C., Philly, Columbus, Huston, Boston, and Las Vegas. If you’re in the neighborhood, I’d stay they were worth stopping by for.

Granted dinner cost me my right leg, but I would gladly pay it again because their food was amazing. Oh my gosh the bread. Still steaming in the pan fresh… because they bring you the pan. We started with some sort of thin crust tomato pizza (which never in a decade would I consider eating do to my love for tomatoes) – it was great. And then the whole reason to come: steak. We enjoyed a fillet minion prepared Oscar style, which was AWESOME. Oscar style starts with a layer of flame grilled asparagus, your fillet, topped with crab and a hollandaise sauce. Insane.

Since the cookies and ice cream didn’t really cut it as a proper celebration we did order desert. Michelle had this tasty coconut layer cake and coconut in all its many forms and I settled for a 30 lb. piece of chocolate layer cake. Which took two of us two days to eat (I kid you not – even then we didn’t finish it all, but after a night in the mini-fridge and then a 4 hour ride home in the trunk we thought it was time to let it go).

Two hours later we headed back up stairs and unwound for the rest of the night.

(Score one for the planning guys!)

Friday was simply a gorgeous day. Brilliant blue skies with lots of puffy white clouds, mid-70’s and to top it all off, it was Michelle’s birthday (which we had actually celebrated twice the night before – oh wait, don’t take that the way it sounds… you know on second thought, go ahead and take that however you want to). I wished her a happy birthday in two time zones (since back home it was her birthday and then when it became her birthday in Chicago) and cards for both.

Despite the late night, we headed out to walk the streets of Chicago and embrace the unplanned day.

Miracle Mile
What would a trip to Chicago be without a trip down the famous Miracle Mile. Shopping, shopping, shopping. I forgot how nice it is to be in the center of commerce. Granted we didn’t really go into a lot of stores and by anything, but it was just great to walk around. We did get the chance to stop at the Chicago Tribune building where they had a giant display in honor of the moon landing on July 20, 1969 (which just happens to be Michelle’s birthday) and so we snapped a few shots of her standing in front of the display.

Since we are coming back in a week with the boys (instead of heading to DC – longish story) we found where the Lego store was at and a few other things that we thought they might get a kick out of.

We did break down though and headed into the Apple store to play with the new iPhones and they were pretty awesome… and pretty expensive. The expensive part of awesome won out and we left the iPhone in the store and the $600+ in our bank account. But I was impressed with how thin and light they really were. Go apple.

We also had a chance to see the old water tower and the Lookingglass Theater (co-owned by David Schwimmer and that is certainly on my list now of places to go.

Museum of Contemporary Art

After looking at a few of the things to see in the city Michelle decided that it would be fun to head to the Museum of Contemporary Art . However by the time we had made our way to MCA we realized it was nearing lunch time and we had no idea what sorts of places we had available to use to dine at.

As luck and thoughtful planning on my wife’s part MCA had a Puck’s restaurant inside. However let’s just say that the fare they offered wasn’t something I normally ventured into. But being Michelle’s day and believe it or not I am normally open to trying something new, I dove head first. We began our meal with a watermelon salad with fennel, some green sprouty things I’ve labeled as lawn clippings and some provolone cheese. And I’ll be darned if I didn’t like it. Who knew? Then I tried some Amish pulled chicken Panini with a slew of other crap I wouldn’t put in my mouth. That too turned out to be good as well. Granted it wasn’t like I wanted to run home and stock the house with it, but no death or vomiting was had, so I count that as a good meal.

We looked around and picked up a few things at the shop including these cool string dolls (made out of a continuous piece of string) [I got Captain Bad and Michelle got the Little Angel].

Lake Michigan

Since we were about 4 blocks away from Lake Michigan we made our east along Chicago until we hit water. I forgot how relaxing large bodies of water can be to my senses. We walked along the beach taking in the sounds and smells that brought us some peace of mind and really took of the edge of a years worth work. We stopped to take some cool shots and played a lot with the reflection in Michelle’s glasses. It was just an amazing way to spend some quite funny time with each other.

Navy Peer

As we continued our way around the shore line we eventually found our way to Navy Peer. The place was crawling with folks. But we pressed into the throng none the less. We passed this really cool R2D2 mailbox on our way so if nothing else it was well worth it. We poked our heads inside the mallish part of the Navy Peer, but that quickly ended in an about face and heading back out into the masses. We made our way towards the end of the peer and a majority of the populace thinned down to tolerable. When we reach the Beer Garden there was some more live music playing (I loved the fact that every we went there was always great live music) and we sat and listened to Dave Tamkin and crew play a few songs. We took a few more photos down at the end and enjoyed the amazing breeze that came off the lake.

We made our way back towards the entrance, brought our customary [insert location here] magnet and avoided buying any elephant ears, but dang did they smell good. We decided to scout out a few things for when we return with the boys so we took a water taxi down to the Field Museum. I cannot honestly tell you the last time I was out in a boat in a lake, let along Lake Michigan. A side for a few rather large wake waves, it just continued to relax us as we got to enjoy the air, the sun and the water.

Grant Park

At this point in the day we were getting pretty fried (I still bear the red marks of my sun burn – back to that whole planning thing, no sun screen), but we went to see Buckingham fountain, took some more pictures and then decided to walk through the 100 foot mist that was spraying off the fountain as it went off.

Millennium Park

Our last stop of this walking tour was through Millennium Park were we saw the usual things you see there including the giant metal reflective bean and what have. By the time we got back to the hotel, my dogs were barking and my body was burnt. But it was a lot of fun.

Again because of timing we hadn’t managed to catch dinner, so we snagged some room service at about 10:30 and celebrated Michelle’s birthday with some chocolate chip cookies and ice cream.

All in all it was a great day.