Chicago Day 3 - Part 2

My mother was finished with her workshop and ready to go to the first of 3 miniatures shows. Here are some pics of her project at the end of the workshop:






That evening, my mother and I took a very expensive taxi ride over to Schaumburg to go to the opening night of the 3 Blind Mice Dollhouse & Miniatures show. The taxi ride over there was quite tense because our driver was a very nice Italian man who liked to talk with his hands – while driving! And he constantly looked in his rear view mirror to make sure we were listening and understanding what he was saying. All of this in rush-hour traffic – quite unnerving! We did, amazingly, get to the show in one piece. He only had to slam on the brakes once to keep from hitting the car in front of us :)

Here we are just after we got in the door. A very nice lady offered to take a picture of the two of us.


There were a lot of pretty miniatures there but I was very tired and just ended up finding places to sit and rest.





I could see a pond out the windows of the conference room where the show was so I went outside to sit for some more and caught a picture of the sun going down.


The ride back to the hotel was yet another adventure! Somehow, the dispatcher told the taxi driver ‘Ohare’ instead of ‘Marriot Ohare’. (or maybe he just didn't understand the dispatcher – who knows) We were already on our way into the airport when he asked us which flight we were taking. We were not paying attention to where we were going because we had been talking (and we didn't know our way around so we probably wouldn't have noticed anyway). We told him – no – no - we were not going to the airport but to the Marriott Ohare Hotel . So he drove around a bit more and took us to the Hilton at the airport. Again, we had to tell him that was not where we were going. My mother finally gave him the address of the Marriot Ohare – and he took us to the Marriot Suites – not the Hotel. Thankfully it was on the same street and not too far away but I had to tell him how to get there (luckily I had paid some attention when the Hotel Shuttle took us there the 1st day – it had stopped by the Marriot Suites before going to our Hotel.)
Quite an interesting couple of taxi rides!

Here is our trip back to the hotel. We simply needed to get from Point A to Point E!

Chicago Trip - Day 3 - Part 1

My mother was off to Day 2 of her workshop so I walked with her up to the classroom and then I pretty much had the whole day free again. Adrianne picked me up to drive me around to places that were too far to walk to the day before. While waiting for her, I got a few pictures of blooming trees on the hotel property.

Before heading downtown, Adrianne took me by to show me her house. On the way we passed this interesting church. I have since learned that it is a Ukrainian Orthodox Church - named St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church. I has a 13 domed roof with 12 domes symbolizing the 12 apostles and the largest center dome symbolizing Jesus Christ.

Once we headed east towards downtown I really enjoyed seeing the Chicago skyline getting nearer and nearer!

There's the old Sears Tower – now called the Willis Tower. I had to take 3 pictures to get the entire thing!

There were some glass balconies recently added way up on the 103^rd floor. Not sure if I could bring myself to go out on one of them or not!

I zoomed in to see the glass balconies:

Luckily, Carmine got finished early with a downtown appointment so we picked him up right after we got there. We had just driven around a little while more when Adrianne’s son, Trey, called and said he had gotten released from school early. So we picked him up too. They drove me all over the place - by the McCormick Center, Soldier Field and we even ventured into a part of the Southside where they have torn down some projects and are trying to revitalize the area.

How would you like to have one of these parking places located right inthe heart of downtown?:

Here is a pretty cool looking modern skyscraper:

View looking up out of Adrianne's sunroof:

This building was in one of the Batman movies:

I like how this old building was preserved when they built the new one on top of it:

There were several big clocks in downtown. Here is one of them:

Here is another side of the Library my mother and I had seen from the train station the other night. From this angle you can tell that these are definitely owls:

When I got back to work after my trip, my friend Jenny asked if I had seen the buildings that look like corn. I knew exactly which ones she was talking about:

This is the famous Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue (the magnificent mile): I believe it was one of very few structures left standing after the Great Fire.

Here we had headed towards the southside. These are some "projects". I ha always heard bad things about projects but these actually look pretty nice to me:

More southside:

Here is an old church down there:

Detail from old church:

Here is Soldier field. The last time I was in Chicago (1999) that big new structure had not yet been plopped in the middle of the old structure!

Here we are passing multi-million dollar condos located right on the waterfront:

Next, we headed up north to Evanston, the town where Adrianne said she would really like to live. It is a really nice, quaint town right on lake Michigan. It is also home to Northwestern University and Loyola University:

I really liked this window? door?

We ate Spanish “tapas”, which I had never eaten before.

I got a good picture of Adrianne and Carmine:

I tried to get a picture of Trey but the background was too bright.

Then we walked around a bit in the small downtown of Evanston.

In the downtown area I noticed several overhangs like this:

And like this:

Adrianne and I knew Carmine and Trey did not get enough to eat at the Tapas restaurant so we decided to eat again – this time Adrianne and I split an Italian Beef Sandwich and Carmine ate the fries. Trey had a full meal – hamburger, Fries and soda. I had never had an Italian Beef Sandwich before.

Look closely at the "B" in "Beef":

There's a bird in it!

I just liked the look of this fire truck so i took a picture of it!

We went back to the beach where some construction work was being done – who knows what they were doing. Possibly in the future if I ever get back, I will see!

We also saw a dog beach – where the dogs can run free and play.

Here Adrianne and I are again courtesy of Carmine:

Adrianne was smiling all pretty and look what the mischevious guys were doing:

Then we headed back and they dropped me off at the hotel. All in all it was a wonderful day!

Now I was ready to head off to the 1st of 3 miniature shows with my mother - the 3 Blind Mice Show.