Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Windy City

My "last hurrah" before in-service started on Monday was a day in Chicago on Saturday! Sarah and I left around 7:00 a.m. and drove up north and picked up my friend Jackie Maronic (who lives in the suburbs) for a day downtown!

The first thing we did was take an 11:00 a.m.-12:00 architectural boat tour from Navy Pier. (Well, actually we ate breakfast at McDonald's at Navy Pier first.) Then we walked up and down Michigan Avenue, just looking at various shops on our way to lunch. The above picture is Centennial Fountain, which shoots out over the Chicago River for 10 minutes at the top of every hour. (It shut off before we reached it so we didn't get wet.)

For lunch we splurged at the Grand Lux Cafe, where we had a pretty nice view from the second story.

Then we walked up to the Water Tower place and had dessert at the Cheescake Factory, which is at the base of the John Hancock building. We decided to go ahead and go up to the top and see the view. So we paid our fee and waited in line to get on an elevator to the 94th floor. It was worth the trip--it was an amazing view!

Looking North

East

South (Sears Tower in the background)

West
By the time we got back to the car it was almost raining, but we decided to make one more detour: Gross Pointe Lighthouse in North Chicago. We visited the beach briefly (that's when it really started raining) then walked around the grounds of the lighthouse before driving back to Jackie's house. Jackie said she had never been close enough to TOUCH a lighthouse before so we had to get a picture of that!


We had a quick bite of pizza and a visit with Jackie's mom Kathy before driving the 2 and a half hours home to Lafayette. We didn't get home until past midnight but it was worth it!

3 comments:

Hayden405 said...

Those are some great pictures. It looks like you guys had a good time...never a shortage of good place to eat in Chicago, Yes?

Unknown said...

Hi Beth!
Found your blog (again) through your parent's prayer letter email. It's great to see you are doing well . . . we're about 1.5 hours west of Chicago, so if you're ever back this way let me know. Maybe we can get together! By the way, you look great! Still love your smile!
Love,
Anouk
www.youbelong.net/thescotts

Erin said...

I remember Jackie!!! She was a lot of fun. I'm glad you were able to have some fun before it gets busy for you. You are gearing up and we are gearing down a bit more. Aaaaaahhhhh. That's the sound of working in the office without about 500 people needing something. :)