In Our Wake: A Day in Chicago (with more pictures than necessary)

Chicago is such a cool city. When I was young, we drove through the outskirts once. I could only see it as different and scary (my young eyes remembered graffiti, garbage, and old buildings).

This time around, however, I fell in love with this place.

We had a red-eye flight, and so went a night with very little sleep--more due to a very drunk lady the seat ahead than the fact that it was 3:00 a.m. That's a story for another time. Anyway, we washed our faces, brushed our teeth, and changed our clothes in the airport bathroom, and then spent the early morning walking around the city before we checked into our hotel.

The hotel was really beautiful.

After checking in, we walked around the corner and (finally) got some amazing food at where else but The Original Pancake House.

Forgive my glazed look. I'm very hungry.

That freshly squeezed orange juice did me good, and I could go for those chocolate chip pancakes right now, and probably always.

After brunch, we went to Cloud Gate for some awesome people watching.

^^Pretend we're standing next to each other in one picture. Someone really needs to invent the hover phone for the sake of couple picture taking.

On a side note, we loved riding the train for no other reason than everything was in English. Last time we used similar transportation, we couldn't understand a word.

After wandering the city a bit, we took the bus to Navy Pier and marveled at the freshwater smell. It was strange to be around that much water without sensing salt.

Wind.

Naturally while one is in Chicage one eats deep dish pizza. We selected Lou Malnati's and were very pleased. Yeah that was some good stuff. (BTW, thanks to those who gave us suggestions on places to eat and things to do! My hunch is we'll be spending time in Chicago in the future and will be taking advantage of your advice.)