April 14, 2007
ON THE ROAD: CHICAGO
Miami Beach in February.
Savannah, St. Augustine and Daytona Beach in March.
Orlando in April.
Now, the Salad Bowl is visiting Chicago.
If there's a travel version of ADD, perhaps it has afflicted me.
I'm up here for a couple days to attend an awards ceremony and do a little a few stories while I'm in the area. Never been to Chicago before, so it's a bit of a baptism. Salad Wife has taken a few days off to join me as well.
Most times I go home from trips like these and feel guilty about having so many new experiences while my family stays back at Casa del Ensalada. This time, we'll have to negotiate the blast furnace of guilt that will hit us from Salad Boy, who was not pleased about being excluded from this trip.
We're staying at the Radisson downtown, which is about a half-block off Michigan Avenue and The Magnificent Mile. For those who don't know, (and I didn't 48 hours ago), it's a long stretch of malls and great stores.
How sad is my shopping acumen? The only store I was crazy to visit (until I saw the glass-roofed Apple store right across the street) was the one we could see from our room:
Yes, it's a four-story Crate and Barrel. Haven't been in one of those since we left the Treasure Coast in 2002. I used to spend hours in the one at the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach. Cool, cool stuff.
This one was no different.
It will be mine.
Oh, yes. It will be mine.
How cool was this store?
It had a porch overlooking Michigan Avenue on which you could sample some lawn furniture.
We sat out there for a good five minutes listening to the traffic and enjoying the evening air.
Okay, we enjoyed the traffic for 5 and the air for about 30 seconds. It was 36 degrees out, for crissakes. We were forced to deploy Operation Life-Saving Parka.
Later, we walked farther down Michigan Avenue to see if we could find the Hilton, where the IACP banquet is tonight.
Along the way we stopped at the Chicago River:
Did I mention it was 36 degrees out?
And we stopped for a bite at a little diner:
Felt like we were eating in a Hopper painting.
And, because we're now addicted to looking for such things because we've been trained to do so by our dear friend Alan, we took photos of bike things.
first, there was this cool-ass bike in a shop window on Michigan Avenue. (It's not exactly biking weather yet up here, although I did see several riders last night braving the elements.)
And this bike rack in the shape of bike wheels was pretty cool, we thought.
Funniest sign of the night?
Saw it when we finally made it to the Hilton.
I call this little masterpiece, "When Fortunes Collide."