Chicago: Day Two

For day two we woke up a little later, with a little less on our agenda but also with a longer day planned thanks to our tickets to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that evening. On this day we drove into the city AFTER rush hour(s), which proved to be not too terrible, but then finding Water Tower Place proved to be more difficult than we expected due to TomTom being incorrect about its location. Then once we found it, we had to find parking nearby that looked safe, not shady. We finally got all this straightened out and started the pretty decent walk to Navy Pier.

By the time we got there, it was almost lunch time, which was later than we planned. But we first went ahead and got tickets for an architectural river cruise that would be departing in about an hour, before we scurried to find some food. We were going to go with the ever-gourmet McDonald's in their food court, but there were 10,000 children there (I'm honestly not sure if that's an exaggeration), but we found a little deli type of place in the food court but further away from the children and grabbed food from there. I tried something a little different for me, a grilled cheese panini, which was just as it sounds only it also had bacon inside. It was pretty good. We gobbled up our food and headed back to the dock where our cruise boat awaited.

The architectural cruise was about an hour long and very interesting. Our guide gave us detailed information about a lot of the buildings we saw: when they were built and for what purpose, what inspired the architecture, etc. I found out after the tour that our guide has been doing her job for six years, so she really knew her stuff! I would definitely recommend going if you ever find yourself in Chicago.

It was a bit of a chilly day, but at least it was sunny and clear for our cruising!

After the cruise, we trekked back to Madison Ave. for some shopping! Garrett's such a trooper! And some of the stores were huge: we're talking four stories of Gap and Banana Republic (the BR had a whole floor dedicated to petites... but somehow I still managed to find nothing!)! Due to lack of time and not lack of stores, we ran short on time and got a bit rushed, so not everything did not get hit as thoroughly as I would have liked. I did manage to end the shopping venture with two items, however. And I did quickly browse the American Girl Place at Water Tower Place... ah to be ten again...

We needed to eat and change clothes before we hit the symphony, because according to their web site, they discourage the wearing of jeans there. Apparently, not everyone follows the guidelines. But I digress... so we had to get creative. We went back to the car to put up our shopping bags and to get our symphony clothes. We spotted The Cheesecake Factory on the first floor of the John Hancock building, close to where we were, and decided we would go there to eat and change in their restroom. When we walked in, we didn't go into the actual entrance and needed to go up a flight of stairs to actually get into the restaurant. Garrett asked the woman about where the restroom was, and she told him where one for the building was. Half of the point of going there was to use a decent restroom, but we went in the ghetto one for the building instead. Ugh. This is when a hotel room would have been nice (but again, definitely can't complain about the awesome free lodging we had!). But we got our clothes changed, and headed back to the restaurant with our casual clothes in tow.

We ate as quickly as time allowed (I had the four cheese pasta and it was really good, but I couldn't finish it... and weren't even saving room for dessert!) before jetting back to the car, then to the bus stop. Garrett's cousin Margaret had given us the low-down of what bus stop to look for and what bus to get on and everything so we could take it to the symphony. Even though it was just down the street, it is a very long street and we were still recovering from yesterday's walking (plus I was wearing heels!). So we waited and waited for our bus. Every other bus came but never ours. We kept watching the time and growing nervous. Finally we decided that it might cost more, but to get there in time, we would have to hail a cab. Thankfully, it was a quick ride and we made it with time to spare.

The symphony building was beautiful. You weren't supposed to take pictures so here's one I stole from the Internet:

When you buy tickets online, they have this really cool 3D seat selector where you can see what the view from your actual seat is going to be like, so we had a good idea of what were getting ourselves into. We had some pretty decent seats about halfway back on the floor, to the far right, where I could see so long as a head wasn't in my way, and the tickets we got I think were their second least expensive avaliable, in the $20-$30 range if I remember correctly. If I have the chance to go again, I might want to look into the seats that are behind and above the orchestra, which I think may cost about the same as ours. But anyway, as far as the concert goes, it was fantastic. First they did a really long selection that was filled with so much drama and rich tones that I really enjoyed. Then they had a couple of songs that highlighted the principal trumpet player, since we did, after all, come on "Trumpet Treasures" night (as you can probably guess, this was all Garrett's doing. :)) And then that had one more selection after that with the full orchestra again. I've heard some good music, but this really blew me away. Definitely worth checking out.

Once the concert was over, we had to get back down to the other end of Michigan Ave. again. We had also planned to take the bus again, but got the same old story: wait, wait, wait, it never comes, hail a cab. We took it to John Hancock, because I had heard about their lounge on the 96th floor and wanted to see a view of the city at night without having to pay for their observatory. I had checked out their menu beforehand and picked out what dessert I wanted to dine on as Garrett and I sat in the quiet lounge and reflected on our crazy lovely day. I'm sure you hear the sarcasm. We took the elevator to the lounge and it was loud and crowded, way more than Yelp.com reviewers led me to believe. Also, a sign was posted that said each guest had to buy a drink (and 98% of them are alcoholic). Also, a hostess or host was no where to be found (unless you walked down a little hallway). We finally found the host and he asked if we wanted to sit at the bar. Um, no. But it was a 20 minute wait for a table with a view, and did I mention it was loud and crowded? I had enough chaos for one day and it was late.

Garrett and I hit the restrooms before deciding to leave, and I took a moment to soak in the fabulous view in the ladies' room.

No view like this in the men's room, sorry guys!

So we headed back to the car and back to Rob and Margret's, where we planned for the next day. I originally had plans for us to do some more things outside, but the weather forecast was looking nasty. So I pointed out the fact that we had our City Pass that would let us get into museums, so maybe we could hit up either The Shredd Aquarium or The Field Museum the next day before doing The Museum of Science and Industry. Margaret gave us the lowdown on the "El" train and we called it a night.

Coming up next: Days 3 & 4, the museum days!