Windy City Weekend...in Pictures

It's been two weeks since we slipped off to visit the Windy City for the weekend, and it was the first time that Dad left both his cell phone and laptop at home...on purpose. We were dire need of a blogless weekend, with no risk of a crisis phone call buzzing into our bliss...and we got it. Thanks in large part to the Byers family, Mother Nature, and the city that Mike Ditka built, we got four days of uninterrupted awesome.



We stayed with Zoey's BFF, Meredith, and her family in South Chicago, and were careful about our Chicago Cubs references. Meredith's Dad, Glen, was so cool as to literally loan us his apartment for the weekend, and we settled in like locals...no urgency, no touristy tourist stuff...just hanging out and having fun.



We had dinner with the Byers family, visited the Brookfield Zoo, snuck away to downtown Chicago, skipped a Cubs game that we had every intention of making, rode the train (Zed's first real train aside from the subway), hung out in Millennium Park, shopped, wandered...and soaked up the city in as relaxed a fashion as we could muster.  We played with our reflections, walked sidewalk tightropes, practiced our alphabet...the kinds of things that you don't find in Foddor's guide books, but you do find in awesome photo albums.



We saw Silverback Gorillas, heard a shop owner explain the Cubs-Sox rivalry to a confused looking European tourist, watched a puppet show from the back of a bike, ate stellar pizza, consumed beers, and avoided any kind of traditional Easter celebration.



We ate ice cream at the Original Rainbow Cone, and watched old growth trees mowed down to the dismay and protest of locals, as the old Evergreen Golf Club in Beverly was leveled to make way for commercial interests.  None of it was on our radar before we left home.



Mostly we did a lot of nothing except enjoy each other...and it was exactly what we wanted.



We're city vacationers, or often enough we're city vacationers. There is always lots to do, lots to see, something to discover around every corner...parks, trains, stores, sights, sounds, and giant shiny bean sculptures...and zoos...there are always zoos.