Big Shoulders (Redux)

So I took that little weekend getaway. Thanks for all your suggestions. I didn't get to all of them because the trip was a mere fifty hours long, but here's some of what I did do.

I took the Archicture of Culture & Commerce tour offered by Chicago Architure Foundation. It was great, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the twenty-five degree temperature and the light snow falling. Highlights: the Carson, Pirie, Scott Building, the gorgeous mosaics and dome inside the Chicago Cultural Center, and hearing about how Queen Victoria gave Chicago a library and Bertha Palmer stuck it to her daddy and her husband by using her inheritances to support unions and women in business. The next day, a friend and I did an unofficial version of the Foundation's Historic Skyscrapers tour.

I shared adult beverages and conversation with a charming local gent at Andy's. I shared dim sum and treason talk with Atriots at The Phoenix. I shared pizza, one of the best chocolately things I've had in a long while and girl talk with an old pal at Pats and the Angel Food Bakery, respectively.

I walked and I walked. I walked Millennium Park (where I decided that I'm sick of Frank Ghery), the Loop (where I hoped, but was not able, to catch a movie at the Siskel Center), Lincon Square, Lake View, the Gold Coast, and Wrigleyville. The aforementioned charming local gent gave me a little driving tour of some neighborhoods farther from the city center. I rode the El. I read the Chicago Reader (the article about Rick Perlstein convinced me that I need to read Before the Storm). I was cold, but in a good, Chicago-appropriate way. I tried to go to Steppenwolf, but I couldn't make it work because after all that walking I was pretty much exhausted. In between all this seeing, walking, eating, and talking, I kept up on news from South Carolina and decided I was an Obama Girl.

I hear it's going to be near-balmy there today and tomorrow. You deserve it, Chicago.