Yet ANOTHER Trip To Chicago

We make a trip down to Illinois......a lot!! It's where 2hotty and I grew up and its where most of our family live now.  So every time we're there we plan a whole itinerary of things to do. Our main goal this time was to shop for "home things"......therefore a pit stop to Ikea was in order and because our friend Chris was also joining us we made a point to go downtown for a little bit of sight seeing!!

(read about our last trip HERE, HERE, and HERE!!)

It was SO great having someone else in the car that would listen to Scott's crazy and random singing and thoughts!! We usually give him a limit as to how many annoying songs and things he can say throughout the whole trip.  Ya its THAT bad! HA! 

While Chris was babysitting hanging out with Scott, I was left alone in the back seat with gossip magazines and my camera!  I learn something new every time I mess around with it!

Look how beautiful our car ride down was:

This is au natural........No Photoshop Needed....taken while we were in a moving car on the interstate!!

Just Mother Nature doing her thing and painting a beautiful Mosaic for all to see!

I wanted so bad for Chris to pull over so I could get a silhouette shot of me and 2hotty but 2hotty put a kabosh to it right away (something about it being too dangerous).....what a party pooper!!

The next day everyone got ready and we headed for the city!!

It was such a beautiful brisk Fall day!! We got really lucky this year with great weather......unlike last year when we practically drove home in torrential tornadoish downpour!! I almost peed my pants!! I get heart palpitations when I see lightning and hear loud thunder ( just some randomness for you).

Not this year......we had awesome weather and most importantly we spent it awesome people!!

Yes this cutie patootie is totally awesome:

This girls ganna SNAP!!

Mommy and baby Nathaniel:

Smiles for Aunty JoJo:

Every time I see this I take a deep breath and go Ahhhh!!!

It's such an amazing city.......with so much to do and see and I feel like I NEED to experience it ALL!

You know your in China Town when you stop to get gas and see this:

Chris loves everything Asian so we wanted to show him Chicago's Chinatown:

I haven't really walked around Chinatown before this trip, so it was pretty much a first for me too.

It was definitely an experience to say the least!!

Chinese BBQ is what I'm OMG'ing about:

What's that orange thing in the window????

I guess everyone in Chinatown drinks this stuff:

It's called bubble tea and it comes in a lot of different flavors.  The black ball looking things on the bottom of the cup are tapioca balls!  It's pretty much a shake.....however I could have done without the tapioca!

It was a bit different as you can tell from 2hotty's first reaction (I thought it tasted like big snot balls running down the back of my throat........I guess its an acquired taste!!)

The Chinese Bakery was interesting too:

95 cents......ya right you would have to pay ME a lot of money to try this thing and even so I don't know if I could do it:

The tea store carried all sorts of specialty teas that could cure almost everything imaginable:

I bought some cute Chinese spoons as a little souvenir of our time there.  I'm going to use them at our next sushi night at home!

All in all we had a great time in Chinatown....................

.............but we left there SUPER hungry!! I'm sorry but no million (thousand?!?! even if they were one year old I couldn't do it) year old egg buns for these kids!!
So I turned to my trusty Tripadviser App to find us a yummy restaurant to eat at.

(passing the Chicago Stock Exchange)

So excited to finally get something in our bellies.

Eleven City Diner is the place to go if your in the mood for some good Pastrami sandwiches and Matzoh Ball soup............

...........More like Matzo AMAZEballs soup!!

Precious Uncle Scotty Bonding:

Totally ready to order our food:

My mouth is watering just looking at this picture......I wish I could have me some right about now:

and we can all guess who cleared HIS plate!! 

2hotty is not wasteful when it comes to his food!  He tells me he's still a growing kid.........ya wider not taller hunny!

Amen to a great weekend trip to Chicago!! 

I think we have another trip planned there very soon with some great friends.......I cannot wait!

xoxo Joanna D.

CHIcago Part 2

So our journey through the beautiful city of Chicago continues!! You can read about Part numero uno.......right HERE.......if you haven't already.......I added a few pictures to that post if you are interested (just click here and it will take you there....Ha!) So here are the details about our Friday in the windy city:

Before heading off to do some more exploring we woke up to weather and to a view looking like this:

just making sure our car was still there.....HA:

We started the day off by getting a small breakfast at Starbucks.....(have you tried there breakfast wraps?!?.....Yummy!!)......and then walked to the loop for the chocolate tasting tour we signed up for.  At first I had thought the tour would be by the Magnificent Mile (where we went shopping) but found out that they do that location only on the weekends! The tours on Friday are only held at the loop...........which was only a twenty minute walk for us! Oh well.....that only meant more to explore and see! 

We crossed a bridge to get there:

 

 

to see these beautiful buildings on the other side:

and these little guys:

snapped some more scenic pictures along the way:

and arrived at our destination (we were meeting at the original Marshal Fields for our tour):

 

to find out we actually had some time to waste.......so we headed on over to Millennium Park:

 we stopped to smell the flowers:

took these pictures by the bean (a must have when you visit)!!:

 picture I took of Scotty:

some fun sculptures:

we also stopped at the tower fountains to watch all the school kids play in the water:

To be continued..........................

 

(I guess I will post in 3 parts........stay tuned for CHIcago Part 3!!)

xoxo Joanna D.