Chicago or Bust

February 4th to February 8th 2009 Chicago Trip Report

PLEASE NOTE: This report is the property of the author and may not be copied or reposted, in full or in part, without the author's prior written permission and No Video or pictures may be re-posted or linked without express written permission of the owner!

In 2005 I went to my first “real” convention; I had been to a very small Star Trek convention about 10 years before. But I don’t really count that one.

However in 2005 James Marsters was coming to Toronto as part of the SFX convention and there was no way I was going to miss that. Even though people told me the ticket price was too expensive and I had no one to go with, I still went. It was a 3 day event and on that Friday night I met Kelly! We just happen to be seating next to each other at the bar in the restaurant that the VIP ticket holders were having their private dinner with James at. Well we hit it off; we spent the rest of the weekend hanging out, along with another very nice lady named Leslie and remaining friends, even though we lived in different countries. Kelly was visiting from Atlanta, Georgia in the US.

After that we met up again in Los Angeles in 2006, where Kelly had introduced me to her boyfriend Matt who I discovered to be a wonderful guy and ever since we have met up in different cities for different conventions a couple of times a year.

So, I was super excited to received their wedding invitation and be able to go and attend their wedding as well as see them in Chicago (Kelly had moved there a few years ago). Since I was bringing the hubby with me, we decided to make it a mini vacation as well and do some sight seeing as well.

So here my report of our trip and Kelly and Matt’s wedding.

Wednesday February 4th, 2009

We (my husband Rick and I) arrived in Chicago at O’Hara just after 9:00pm and got our bags. Then looked for the rental car desk, only to find that even though the website said it was in the terminal, you in fact had to take a shuttle to it. What I did find what that it was COLD, it felt like -20C (-4F) maybe of course because it WAS! Not that we aren’t use to cold, but still its no fun waiting out in the cold for the shuttle bus. But we did our rental car and then head to meet Matt and Kelly at TGIF, since it was both close and open late.

It was really great of them to make time to come out and meet us, since I know a few days before my wedding, I was pulling out my hair and I didn’t have time for anything! We had a really nice dinner/snack and a great talk. And Rick was finally able to meet both Kelly and Matt in person, which was nice. We also got to catch up and just relax. Though since it was late, we didn’t stay too long.

Then it was off to the hotel, thank goodness for GPS! We were able to find most things easily. We arrived at our Hotel the Marriot Midway. We were stay close the wedding/reception sites, but since air Canada doesn’t fly into midway, we had to fly into O’Hara, which sucked because we drove by Midway everyday and it would have been so much more convenient. But we still got a great price on the room itself (thanks to Kelly and priceline!). The hotel was great and had a warm fire in the lobby to greet us on all the cold nights.

Though once we check in and got to our room, we realized that somehow one of the keys to the suitcase got lost, so poor Rick couldn’t get to anything in his bag and hotel maintenance was closed for the night. So we had to wait until morning to open it.

Thursday February 5th, 2009

One of the first things we did when we woke up was call maintenance to bring us bolt cutters to break the stupid lock, but once we had that open we were good to go.

After breakfast, we heading out to do some sight seeing, we had originally had a tour planned, in fact it was booked and paid for. It was a gangster tour, where they would take us to all the famous Chicago gangster from the 20s and 30s stuff happened, the guide would be dressed up to match and so on. But even though I had confirmed the day before, I got a message it was cancelled. Which sucked, but it did gives us a little more time to sleep in and to take at the other sites.

Our first stop was The Sears Tower, where we got a short film about the construction of the tower as well as seeing the entire city from the observation deck. It was really cool! Though it would suck it work there, since I found out, that no matter how often you go up and down, your ears pop each and every time!

Then after that we headed to get some lunch, it had actually been some time since breakfast, and we were both hungry. One of things I was told that I really should do when I was in Chicago was had some Chicago style pizza (Special thanks to Wendy for the suggestion and the restaurant info) so we went to Giordano’s (on Rush Street) and ordered a small one.

Rick was really hungry and did suggest we get a medium, but since I wasn’t as hungry we stayed with the small (he did say after he was really glad it wasn’t any bigger). It was delicious!!! But sooooo think and filled with cheese!

After that what we really needed was a nap, but we headed to Museum of Photography, only to be denied! It was closed! It didn’t say anything about being closed on its website or I would have changed it to the Museum of Art. But, because I wasn’t really sure where the Museum of Art was (turns out it was just down the street), we went to our next thing to do on our list.

Shopping on the Magnificent Mile. I had a list of stores I wanted to go to, and we did get to most of them, but I soon lost interest. It’s actually not that much fun to shop when you can’t buy anything. And some of the store like:
Cartier, Burberry, Saks Fifth Ave, Gucci Shops Inc, Louis Vuitton were just nice to see but, I couldn’t actually afford anything there. I did finally realize I am a bargain shopper, I much prefer to find a deal. We did buy a few things, including a pair of swim truck for Rick so he could use the hotel pool.

Once I was too tired to keep going we headed back to the hotel, we were suppose to go and have a nice dinner at Morton’s but we were still both full for the pizza at lunch to eat a steak dinner, so I had to cancel our reservation. Since we weren’t having steak for dinner, we stopped in White Castle for dinner (there was one close to the hotel). And I had made it a point to go to one and try it out. Since I wanted to know what people were talking about. Well… Ummmmm… that was interesting… let’s just say I won’t be looking for another White Castle any time soon.

The rest of the night consisted of relaxing in the hot tub and going for a swim at the hotel.

Friday February 6th, 2009

We decided to eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant on Friday, thinking there would be a bigger selection. As it turns out not so much, it was the exact same as the room service menu, though it was still nice. Then we were off on out grand adventures for the day.

Our first stop was Museum of Science and Industry, this was chosen especially for Rick, since this was his kind of thing. Plus, they have a U boat there from world war 2, U-505. That we could tour and I knew Rick would love doing that. He totally into the German Subs. We did the U-505 sub tour first; it was interesting, though Rick wasn’t listening to the guide very much because he felt the guy didn’t know his stuff.

Then we headed to the flight simulator, where we got to feel what it was like to be flying in a jet. Actually, Rick flew, I was the gunner and was supposed to shoot the helicopters, I don’t think I managed to hit any of them. But that was mostly because Rick wouldn’t get as close to them that I needed.

Then we toured some of the rest of the museum. It was really hard to get Rick away from it; he was like a kid in a toy store (that had really big toys!!!). But I finally managed to get to go and we headed to lunch.

I book lunch in a little French restaurant “La Petite Folie”, that was close by. It was actually in a mall, but inside it was really nice and the food was amazing! Rick had the shrimp crepes, and I had the fricassee of escargots and wild mushrooms. It was a wonderful meal, light and delicious!

After lunch, we headed to the Field Museum. Which I was really excited to go to since I really wanted to see Sue.

Sue is the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossil yet discovered. And while I like dinosaurs (who doesn’t?) my main reason to see Sue had to do with the Dresden Files Book by Jim Butcher.

In one of books: Dead Beat, Harry Dresden (the main character, who is a Wizard) brings Sue to life and then puts a saddle on her and rides her to go fight the bad guys. I had my picture take in front of her and I held up a sign, however you can’t really see the words, anyways it says “ ALL I NEED IS A WIZWARD AND A SADDLE AND I AM GO TO GO!” So we got to see Sue and a few other things in the Museum before it closed.

Then we took a walk around, the grounds around Burnham Harbor and see Soldier Field. We also saw Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium, but did not visit them. Once we did that, we were off to dinner and a play.

I had gotten us tickets to see “Desire Under the Elms”, which was playing at Goodman Theatre, so I booked reservations at Petterino's restaurant which is right next door and is know as a very nice place to eat. The restaurant has all these cool characterize of well know actors on the walls, some of them have been signed, (while I looked to see if James Marsters had one, since he had his start at The Goodman, I did not see his. Hmmmm maybe I should send them one!).

Petterino's had a theatre menu, which was a 3 course meal for a lower price. We both chose to eat of that. Rick had the Petterino’s Salad, Steak Diane and Strawberry Tall Cake and I had the Petterino’s Salad, Chicken Armando and Strawberry Tall Cake. Then after dinner we went to see the play.

Desire Under the Elms, starred Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino, Boris McGiver, Daniel Stewart Sherman and Pablo Schreiber. It was written by Eugene O’Neill, and directed by Robert Falls. It was a very good play, though it was NOT a feel good play. Very much a drama. It was however beautifully acted! While I was excited to see Brian Dennehy, it was Carla Gugino performance that really impressed me.

Once the play was over we headed back to the hotel. I had texted Kelly earlier to see when she would be checking in (since she was staying at the same hotel) and they I texted her to see if she wanted me to drop by that night. Here I was thinking she would be by herself and maybe lonely, silly me. She had 2 rooms and they were full of friends, that would be staying. Basically they were having a party. Which is a really cool way to spend your last night of freedom from marriage. Not that I stayed and partied, I was too tired.

Saturday February 7th, 2009

I had a very relaxing day planned, since we had been running around sight seeing the last 2 days, I didn’t want us to over do it. Plus, I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t miss the wedding or anything. So we slept in a little. Had a lighter breakfast (coffee and muffins from Starbucks in the hotel). And then watched Friday night’s Battlestar Galactica (the hotel had it on demand). After it was off to do some laps in the pool (Kelly was suppose to join us, but she advise me that they were running late on the hair and make up for the bridal party, so she wouldn’t be able to make it) which is understandable.

We had lunch in our room, then got ready for the wedding. As it turns out, I didn’t leave myself enough time to get ready because, we were late in getting there (and my hair was a mess!).

We arrived at Salem United Church of Christ in Oak Lawn just after 4pm. Luckily the wedding started late and we did not miss anything. Matt who greeted us, looked very handsome and quiet relaxed. It was a simple, short (and to the point) service, and it was beautiful! I actually got a little teary.

Kelly looked sooooo beautiful and just kind a princesses in her beautiful dress. And the minister actually gave a little shout out to all the Buffy fans there, since he told the story of hearing about how Matt and Kelly meet, at a Buffy the Vampire Slayer meet up, which was cool.

After the service, we had about an hour and a half until the reception, so we headed back to the hotel (to pick up the items we forgot in our mad dash out). This also gave me the opportunity to fix my hair. We had stopped at a strip mall on the way back, because I saw a Dress Barn store and I wanted to see if the had a dress I had seen in the window of there downtown store (Nope! Had to go down town for that). Rick chose to go the thrift store next door and see what kind of stuff they had, I have to say we both got some funny looks, since we were dressed in our finest, wondering around a thrift store.

We made it the reception at Nikos in Bridgeview just after it started. We knew we would be sitting at a table with a bunch of the Chicago Buffy Meet Up Group, which was really cool. They were of course wonderful and very warm to us both (Shout out to Elizabeth and Dahlia!!!). We had a great time at the reception and so did everyone else and despite Kelly and Matt’s prediction no one threw any punches and no fights broke out.

Everyone have a great time! Both the music and the food were great! We didn’t stay and party until the wee hours of the night mostly because we are both lame and getting old before our time. Still it really was wonderful.


Sunday February 8th, 2009

I had another relaxing morning planned for us on Sunday. Since I didn’t know how late we would have partied the night before. So we slept in a little, then we went to work out (had to burn off all the great food we had been eating). Followed by swimming and a soak in the hot tub.

Then it was off to finish packing, get ready and check out. Once we did that we headed to IHOP for brunch. I never thought to give us extra time at IHOP because I had never been to one THAT BUSY! There was quit a line up to be seated, but we did get a seat and had our food serviced quickly (which was good). We didn’t have the time to linger, so even before we were done I asked for the bill and we were out of there.

We had a tour planned and we had to be there in time for it to start at 2:00pm. We arrived about 15 minutes before hand at ArchiCenter Shop in the Santa Fe Building, on S. Michigan Ave. for our Architecture of Culture & Commerce Tour. This tour was booked more for Rick, because he has a great interest in architecture, had it been just me I would likely have gone shopping (because I have a great interest in buying things!).

It was a 2 hour walking tour, that didn’t take us too far but was pretty interesting. It was a lot of walk a couple of minutes, stop talk about a building, its history the architect and so on. Though we did go into a few cool building and see some really nice architecture. We also got some cool history about Chicago along the way. Once that was over, we picked up the car from the last parking lot to over charge us for parking. There were 2 things we didn’t expect or like about Chicago, the first was the cost to park, because it a lot of cases the total for the day was equally to or more then the amount we spent on food (for both of us) and the drivers in Chicago! They were nuts and rude, I must have asked a hundred times what the hell are they honking at? If some one didn’t move half a second after the light turned green , they hooked, if some wasn’t going twice the speed limit, they honked. Basically it was beep, beep, beep all over the place. And then once you got off the road, it was may we have your first born for parking.

But that was soon to be over since we were heading back to the airport. We had a little trouble finding a gas station before we returned the rental car (we have to return it with a full tank). But once we did we had no trouble, and the airport check in and flight back was uneventful.

We did managed to go through customs and get our bags at wrap speed. We landed in Toronto at 10:05pm and were in the cab at 10:25pm. We even got to pick up the pets from our parents that night instead of having to wait until the next day. So the entire family was together again by midnight.

So that is it, hope you all enjoyed the report!