So I hopped on a plane and flew to Chicago for the weekend to meet up with some old grad school friends. E is one of my closest friends in the world and my former roommate in Germany and Ranger would probably die if he were to stop talking at any given moment, but we love him nonetheless.

Chicago Waterfront

As both E and I didn’t get to Jimmy’s place until after 11pm, there wasn’t much time before we had to go out. We each ate 2 pieces of arguably one of Chicago’s best deep dish pizza joints (it was very good). This actually proved to be a bad move as those 2 slices of pizza thoroughly filled us up. We went to a near Jimmy’s place briefly before deciding to head over to Bucktown. Cool place, talked with some of the people, and by the time we were about to leave, the place was packed to the gills. We got home around 4am as some bars in Chicago close at 4am.

Lunch on the beach

Saturday was spent walking along the beach, which to my amazement is quite nice. We ate atop one of the beach restaurants where we proceeded to mess with our waitress (all in good fun of course). E & I of course had a beer while poor Ranger forgot his ID at home, even though he’s the oldest and balding (a lot).

Saturday evening we hit up another bar near Jimmy’s place. We again hassled our waitresses and spoke with the girls sitting next to us. They gave us some tips on places to go for the evening. One recommended Level while her friend was strongly against it.

After consulting one of Jimmy’s friends, we decided to consume some bloody beef at Mike Ditka’s. Although I wouldn’t have guessed his restaurant to have such good steaks, but damn was it good.

Dinner at Ditkas

So we went to Level anyway, which is a nightclub with possibly the worst dancers in all of Chicago (maybe all of the world). It was kinda like a bunch of wannabes that couldn’t get in to the cool club. This was actually ok as it didn’t seem to be pretentious just a bunch of bad dancers.

The one place those 2 girls did agree on was McFadden’s. Although not the coolest place on earth, it was filled and we did have some fun. One random thing that happened was this completely trashed girl came over to us, too drunk to even talk. She looked at me and then put my hand on her breast and gave me this look like “do you like?”. Rather awkward, I know. I took my hand off and she just put it back. This happened 3 or 4 times. An innocent bystander came over to me and bitched me out for taking advantage of the “blacked out girl” as she so gracefully put it. I actually didn’t have a comeback for that as it was an entirely awkward situation. Just after the breast incident, drunkie wobbled back to where she came from. We later found out it was her 22nd birthday. Happy Birthday “blacked out girl”!

E & I share the same views on black girls and that is “yes please”. There were 3 black girls in this place (for whatever reason the places we went to in Chicago were all predominantly white). All 3 girls were fairly attractive with exceptionally good legs (and short dresses). We later learned that all 3 were call girls trying to pull a trick (or two). Unfortunate they have to resort to such ways. We were all thoroughly disappointed.

So to sum up our going out experience in the Windy City – “2 failed attempts at inebriation with 1 free boob & 3 black hookers”. Sounds a bit funny, but there really isn’t much else to say.

Sunday E had to get back to DC, so the Ranger and I went first to the Field Museum (not all that interesting) and we then proceeded on the foot tour of downtown Chicago. We saw the bean, which is pretty sweet and the fiber optic waterfalls.

The Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain

Me in the Bean

The Bean

Fiber Optic Waterfall

We ended the day on Navy Pier. At the end of the pier, you can get a nice view of the Chicago skyline.

Chicago Sunset

There were also a few places that had live music. We walked through the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows per a recommendation from my father. It was interesting and they explained a lot about the different types of stained glass. I’ve always been a fan of stained glass because my mom used to do it quite often when I was younger.

LA aka Fantasy Land

So we had to wake up at 4am Monday morning in order to catch our flights to the west coast, LA for me and SF for Jimmy. This made for a really long day, because I was essentially waking up at 2am PST and heading straight to work from the airport. I took a few shots out the window of the airplane as we were landing. Interesting to see the mystical place I live.