Three Days in Chicago

Early yesterday morning, my family and I got back from a touristy trip to Chicago! The boys had conferences on Wednesday (so no school), and then they had no school on Thurs and Fri as well. Here are a handful of pics - many that I posted on Instagram, but many more that haven't been posted.

Zonked out in our Uber ride from the airport to our hotel at 11 pm on Wed.


Hotel breakfast the next morning! Our room was 3 floors from the top!


This was the 5th floor - the first few were banquet halls.


Walking to the Field Museum!


Biggest dino skeleton ever found!








Pretzel snack in the main hall.


Body heat! We laughed because "cold Mom" truly had a cooler skin tone...


... and "hot Henry" had a HOT chest!




Charlie LOVES snakes! He was reciting facts to us.






Sue! The biggest T-Rex skeleton ever found!


Mummies!


There was a fun exhibit where you "shrunk" and went underground.






Charlie took a 90 min nap IN THE MUSEUM on my lap!...


... and he woke up HARD! :)


We walked to Giordano’s for deep dish!


... then headed to Willis Tower in the rain. The boys had fun before going up the elevator...






102 floors up in Willis Tower!


Fearless Charlie.


Me and my boys.


In their Chucks.


Wandering the city later.




At the Ghirardelli store for the RICHEST hot cocoa ever!!

That concluded day 1. I got up early on day 2 (Friday) to go for a run. As I mentioned in 2 posts last week (first this one and then updated in this one), I had been feeling the effects of over training a bit, so I was just going out for an easy "tourist" run.

Millennium Park before sunrise.


Running along Lake Michigan (with Navy Pier in the distance).


Looking out from Navy Pier.


At the end of Navy Pier with NO ONE else around!




Henry and the muffin he stole from breakfast.


"The Bean" was closed off! So here was our view from across Millennium Park.


Walking to Alder Planetarium.


Feeding his stolen muffin to the geese.


Close to the Planetarium.






Ready for a show (we saw 2).


Then we hit Shedd Aquarium!








Walking to a park after leaving the Aquarium.


Boys. :)


Still spunky after playing an hour at the park.

Then we headed to Frontera Grill. It's a restaurant from Rick Bayless - the guy on PBS with the show "Mexico: One Plate at a Time." The boys and I got into his show a few years back, and we wanted to stop at his restaurant. This was our biggest splurge all trip as the meal for the 4 of us (no drinks and 1 dessert) was about $150. But it went over WELL!! We loved our food.

My enchiladas!


Henry's tacos ready to assemble. He kept saying "Oh, these are GO good!"


Toasted s'more tres leche cake for dessert!!


Post-meal photo.

Day 3 (Saturday) was going to be a lazier day. And we all needed it. We got up later (I lifted weights), had breakfast, the boys swam a little, and we hit an “architecture boat tour” late morning on Navy Pier.

Selfie on the Chicago River.




We had a rare sight: 2 bridges were going up to let the sailboats off the lake for
the winter! They only really go up in the spring and fall for the "sailboat migration."






Post-boat ride on Navy Pier.


Treats!


Living his best life.




We spent 2 hours in the pool that afternoon!


Happy Hour at our hotel: Mama and I each got 2 free drinks and I was a little drunk for 10 minutes.

We headed to Lou Malnati’s for deep dish to compare it to Giordano’s from 2 nights prior. We ordered and was told it'd be 90 minutes before we got a table, so we headed to Ulta to look for makeup and then on a nice river walk:

Just wasting time.


Along the river! (Love this pic!)








Charlie went for an "epic cheese pull" that made our waitress laugh!


Henry followed suit!

We all agreed that Lou's had a better crust, but only Henry and I thought Giordano’s was better - Giordano had better (and MORE) toppings, and that did it for us. We hope to go back to Chicago within the next 2 years to keep comparing deep dish pizza places!

We got back to our room, packed up, and hit the hay. We woke up at 4:30 a.m. for our 6:35 flight the next morning (yesterday), and the boys did NOT want to get up:

The L-shaped sectional was a pull-out: Henry got the bed and Charlie slept on the couch.


Ended up being my 2nd biggest week of steps since wearing my Garmin!

We were about 2.5 miles from the museums, maybe a mile from Willis Tower, and about a 1/2 mile from the edge of Navy Pier. And we walked everywhere. For just being there 3 full days, I put on 152,485 steps last week, behind the 164,047 from our week of walking in Italy, but ahead of 144,785 steps from our week in Mexico in January (made bigger by 2 long runs instead of just the normal 1), which were the other 2 big spikes in that screenshot above. Friday was my short run (8000 steps or so), but then had a total of 32,455 steps, which would have been my biggest step day before Italy (and now ranks in my top 4 since wearing my Garmin).

It was a bit of a "test" for the boys to see how well they'd handle so much walking. We'd like to do some major hiking in a National Parks or Grand Canyon trip sometime in the next few years (nothing's planned), and this went pretty well! Charlie got crabby in the evenings, but we also weren't getting long nights of sleep.

Alright... back to "real life" now!