Couple of days in Chicago

I wanted to write about my first real relaxed trip to Chicago in a long time. The last few times I had gone to the city, it was with some purpose which meant that there was rarely time to look around and enjoy the place. Two weeks back, we (my wife and I) went to meet a really good friend of mine (and a former roomie :)) who also wanted to go around Chicago with his wife and kid.

It was soo good. I totally forgot what a great city Chicago is. Having gone to grad school in Chicago, I took a lot of things for granted. Tall buildings did not make a huge impression. Michigan avenue was just another street a few miles from home and so the feeling was that I could always go there sometime. I have gone there many times but did not learn to appreciate the sheer architectural beauty of the place as you walk through. For a minute there, I wanted to compare it to Valluvar Kottam and PSBB  and how we PSBBians have probably never been there but then realized there is no comparison. I would not go into Valluvar Kottam even today and there is nothing to appreciate :).

Seriously, here are a list of places you should definitely go to if you hit Chicago – Millenium park, up Sears or Hancock, Pizza at Giordano (the best deep dish ever), ice cream at Ghiradellis, the museum campus and walk around the city as much as possible. We also had dinner in Artopolis in Greek town. I don’t know how authentic the food is, but it was pretty good. Decent options for a vegetarian. I will recommend the spinacopita and the Greek coffee with lots and lots of sugar. They also have a really nice bar though I did not have anything. We also got to watch Usain Bolt run his brilliant 100 m at the olympics there which made the food taste even better. The only negative about the entire trip was the huge cost of parking vehicles. I probably spent enough to buy a reasonably good used car.

I would also like to give people advice on how to find the directions to a place especially when someone asks you for it :). Please make sure the place still exists so that you (or other people – namely me) don’t go on a wild goose chase on an empty stomach.

The ideal time to go to Chicago would be late summer/early fall. The place is really beautiful. I miss Chicago and all the fun I had there :(. Good times, great fun and a bunch of awesome guys for friends. It was really awesome to meet one of them over the weekend. Actually I met two of them, one very briefly though when I gate crashed his house early in the morning and frightened his kid :).