Our Trip to Chicago

Mike and I just arrived home from our 4 night 5 day vacation in the Windy City!

While I had been hoping for unseasonably warm weather, what we actually got was unseasonably COLD weather, even for Chicago. There was a huge snow storm, and if you have watched the news over the last few days, you'd have heard about the plane that ran off the runway into a busy neighborhood/highway and crashed into a couple cars, killing a little boy. We were driving out of the city back to our hotel room when that happened, but luckily, we were taking the back roads out of the city, not the expressways. Due to the traffic and the snow storm, it took us nearly 4 hours to travel to the west side of the city, which normally took us 45 min to an hour drive. If we had been on the expressways though, we would have been stuck much longer than that. Mike drove like a pro! Even in our Mustang with rear wheel drive, he managed to keep us from getting stuck in the snow, sliding off the road, or getting hit by the insane number of idiot drivers plaguing the area, all without losing his cool.

During our stay, we saw the Field Museum, the Institute of Arts, Shedd Aquarium, the planetarium and the Museum of Science and Industry. We visited some decent restaurants, ordered in some Chicago style pizza and drank a couple bottles of champagne to celebrate our anniversary/birthdays (Mike's birthday is December 7th, our anniversary is the 8th and my birthday follows on the 9th). With the exception of all the driving, we had a wonderful vacation and we're talking about going back again sometime when it is warmer so we can see more of the city on foot.
While we were driving through the city, I was able to take some pictures during the snow storm. Here are some of my favorites:
Soldier Field – 5:00 pm Thursday the 8th

City streets

Pedestrians walking down Roosevelt

Snowy park the next morning

There's no place like home. Glad to be back safe and sound.