My Kind Of Town

Chicago was awesome (well, it was insanely cold, WAYYYY colder than central New York, but still, it was awesome)! Kevin had to go for business, but since Chicago is the city we lived in when we first got married, and since tomorrow is our 8th anniversary, it seemed like the perfect time for me to accompany him. We stayed overnight in the suburbs on Friday with one of my best friends from college, Jen, and her husband Steve. Jen drove us in to the city on Saturday, and we took a trip down memory lane...here's our first home at 1000 W. Washington St. We had a loft in this building--1/2 of the building was a book binder and 1/2 was a Nabisco factory. Our loft was on top of the old oven!
Directly across from our old loft is Harpo Studios--we saw the limos pulling up every day, the lines of people waiting to see a taping of "Oprah," but we never saw the woman herself. No luck this trip either--she is elusive!

After a yummy brunch at Le Peep (which is housed inside our old apartment building) we were done reminiscing and ready to see some new things. Our first stop was The Drake...it's a gorgeous old hotel ovelooking Lake Michigan. I always was curious about what it looked like inside, and I finally found out, as that is where Kevin's company paid for us to stay. Woo hoo!

Another first for us was a trip to Millenium Park to see the "Bean." I loved it and took a ridiculous number of photos...the only reason I stopped was because I could no longer move my fingers to work the camera due to the frigid weather!

A view from under the Bean:

And yet another Bean picture:

And finally, me and Kevin in front of the Bean:

And part of the Chigao skyline including the Sears Tower seen through the gridwork of the new (to us anyway) amphitheater in Millenium Park:

After hitting a few bars in the Gold Coast, we decided to end the night on a nostalgic note. We cabbed it back to West Loop and ate dinner in Greektown, then finished up the night at our old neighborhood haunt, Emmit's. A scene in Ocean's 11 was filmed at Emmit's while we lived in Chicago, and I remember how excited the waitresses were because they got to meet George Clooney and Matt Damon. This visit, we didn't actually get to sit in George and Matt's booth, but it was still a perfect end to the day.

Oh yeah, one other first for me--Jen made me get on Facebook! I'm always the last to jump on these trends...I don't think I really used email until 2002. Now I have another way to procrastinate, I mean, reminisce!