We had all kinds of big plans for our last full day in Chicago, but when the day actually dawned, we didn’t feel like doing anything but reading (Lis, by this time, had a little mountain of newspapers to work through), so that’s what we did until dinner.

For dinner, we had reservations at Alinea Restaurant. Lis had first heard of Alinea while listening to an interview on Fresh Air with the chef, Grant Achatz. He is in to making dining an all-five-senses experience, and Lis was intrigued, though certain that she’d never talk me in to trying it, as the prices are OBSCENE. Still, she took her shot – “What would you think about trying out this restaurant while we’re in Chicago?” She described the restaurant and the price, and to her surprise I said yes (I never know how things are going to strike me these days – had she asked at a different time I might have been adamantly against it – ain’t hormones grand…)

Luckily for Lis, my sanguinity held, and we were off to our fancy restaurant. We took the subway to get there, and since we had early reservations (we are as one with the early bird special set), we got to pile in to a big city rush hour subway car. My sweetie couldn’t really do the requisite body-ing, due to her injuries, so I plunged in and she followed in my wake. I always feel very urban when I’m pushing my way through a crowded bus or subway car 🙂

Alinea’s schtick is that they’re not just an expensive restaurant serving fine food – they take control of the entire experience – you just show up and do as you’re told. Which, if you can let go, is really quite fun. Also, the instant you step in the door your every need is attended to, mostly by strapping young men, though there was a very lovely young women who showed us to our table.

There were two men who attended us, and they managed to watch our every move (at one point, Lis dropped her napkin on the floor and was immediately brought a new one) without being obtrusive or creepy. They also managed to be simultaneously formal and friendly, and we didn’t feel too out of place, which had been my biggest concern. Frankly, I felt more comfortable there than in the public rooms of the oh-so-hip James hotel.

The menu was 17 courses (really, 19 courses, since the “English Peas” course had 3 courses itself – everything you could possibly think of doing to peas, including freeze-drying them). I’ve posted a picture of the menu here – after each course name there is a bubble. The size of the bubble indicates the size of the course (some courses are just one bite), and the placement indicates the taste – more to the right = sweet, more to the left = savory.

The first course came out, and it was steelhead roe, and I experienced a moment of panic – I hate roe, and am not fond of seafood in general, but I hadn’t realized until now that of course a fine dining establishment is going to do a lot of seafood. So I had a little talk with myself – “Just try everything – eat everything they bring you, no matter what it is.” I took a deep breath and ate my roe – and it wasn’t too bad, at first. Eventually it got too fishy, and so I just ate everything else, which was fruity and yummy. Also, when the roe fell off its watermelon gel base and landed on the plate, the plate and the lighting and the roe interacted in such a way that the roe appeared to be backlit – very cool.

And so we worked through our courses, all of which were good and some of which were spectacular – amazing explosions of flavor in your mouth. And the anticipation between courses was very fun – what would be next? And the presentation of each course was phenomenal – I thought waiting to see what kind of out-of-this-world utensil or serving dish the course would be in was just as much fun as waiting for the course itself (the restaurant website has a little slideshow of some of the offerings).

The very last course is called Chocolate, and we had actually seen a YouTube video of it, but the video doesn’t do it justice. In the video, the chef is drawing really cool things on the table with chocolate, and suddenly just ruins it by smashing this big ‘ol thing down on it (a block of freeze-dried chocolate mousse). In real life, this is the best part, for two reasons: 1) the military precision of the timing – at just the moment that the chef places the last bit of chocolate and stands up, a waiter rushes the mousse block out to him on a silver tray; and 2) the dry ice effect of the frozen mousse sends silvery wisps spilling out to the edges of the table, partially obscuring the chocolate design. It actually choked me up a little (I know, I know….).

After dinner I needed to use the restroom – I asked Lis, who had gone earlier, where it was. She said “Oh, don’t worry – they will show you.” I stood up, and our waiter was instantly at my side. I asked “Where is the restroom?” “Megan will show you.” The lovely young women who had showed us to our table re-appeared, and WALKED ME TO THE RESTROOM! The restroom itself had candles and low lighting and very mild incense and I felt like I should be getting a spa treatment in there. When I returned to the table, the waiter magically appeared again to hold out my chair for me.

We paid our (YOWZA!$$!) bill and left (they walked us to the door) and rejoined the masses on the train for the ride back to the hotel. It was a really fun evening.

Yesterday we were going to go back to the Art Institute, but we woke up to beautiful sunny skies and the forecast said sun, 74 degrees and low humidity, so we opted for the Chicago Architecture Foundation Boat Tour instead.

Lis had read nothing but good things about this tour while doing her (extensive) research for our trip, and our initial tour-guide cabbie had said that all of his fares had raved about it, so we were planning to do it if we could.

We followed our now-regular pattern of lying about in the morning and doing our outing in the afternoon. For lunch, we went to Lawry’s, where Cathy and Claudia had eaten dinner our first night in town. It is a very staid, English-country-house-dark-wood-interior type of place; just what we needed after the hipness of The James (though The James has been growing on us, after we adjusted to all its faults – we are loving our loft and media room!). The prime rib was very good, and instead of bread they gave us home made potato chips that were FANTASTIC and (unfortunately) addictive.

We made our way to the Chicago River in plenty of time for our 3pm tour, and boarded the boat (sadly, I didn’t get her name). We were early enough that we were able to get a good seat on the outside of the upper viewing deck. The docent was an older man, and at first I was afraid he was going to be boring – while we were waiting to set sail, he told us about some of Chicago’s early history at a level of detail that did not bode well. But, once he started talking about the buildings, all was well – he was enthusiastic and informed and funny in a geeky way, and we had a great time, and I took a million pictures (you can view a severely culled but still way-too-many collection of these photos here).

One of the things I really liked about the tour (other than being out on the water on a beautiful day) was his enthusiasm for modern architecture. I’ve never gotten modern architecture – they just look like boring boxes to me. But he clearly loved modern architecture, and was able to explain what was great about each building in a way that you could really see it.

There was one building in particular where this talent was in evidence. It was a bleak, utiliarian thing, and he said that most of the other docents, if they mentioned it at all, joked “Look away! Look at those buildings over there!” But he had a fondness for it, and pointed out its various features, and while it never stopped being unattractive, you could see what he was talking about. Plus, I was glad that the poor homely building, surrounded by beauties, had someone who loved it. 🙂

After our tour, we split up – Lis went to the Architecture Foundation store, and I went back to the hotel. Lis joined me about an hour later, and we went out in search of dinner. We ended up at The Big Bowl, and found that we had had a misunderstanding – I thought we were getting take out, and Lis thought we were eating there. We weren’t sure what to do, as I was really tired and wanted to go back, but Lis had been really wanting to have a drink with dinner. But then I remembered that we had our purloined airplane rum in the room – how about we get some OJ or something, and have drinks there? OK.

So, we got our food to go, and then I took the food back to the room and Lis went to Trader Joe’s to get some juice (those of you who are Lis’ Facebook friends know how this story ends). After a few minutes the room doorbell rang. I answered it and there was my sweetie, looking a bit shaken and clutching a tattered juice bottle – “I hurt myself,” she said, limping in to the room and showing me her abraded arm. “What happened?!?” “I tripped coming out of Trader Joe’s.”

She had skinned up her elbow and wrist, skinned and bruised her knee, and bruised her pinky finger. She had dirt on her chin and nose, but that washed off. Poor sweetie!

We washed her up and put neosporin on everything, called room service for some ice in a couple plastic bags, and then sat down to eat. She took ibuprofin and iced everything, had her dearly-bought drink, and then we settled down to another movie in the Media Room, this time Sleepless in Seattle. As before, it was pretty AWESOME – this time Lis was prompted to actually price the projector thingy (approx $1,300).

I’m happy to report that this morning Lis was not nearly as stiff and sore as she had feared, and that she should heal up nicely.

Yesterday we were both pretty weary, but wanted to go to the Art Institute of Chicago – the one tourist site that we both definitely wanted to hit (at one point, I was maintaining that it was the only site I was going to hit). So we rested in the morning, and headed out to the museum in the afternoon.

But first, we had lunch at CafeLux again. Nothing really noteworthy to mention here, except that after lunch the sweet, attentive waiter brought me my credit card receipt and said, very earnestly, “Thank you, Ms. Delawater.”

And so, on to the Art Institute. Prior to our trip, we had spent an evening reverse engineering the Art Institute’s reciprocal membership – we started with a list of all the museums with whom the Art Institute has reciprocal privileges, and then looked at all the museums with which those museums have reciprocal privileges, looking for the best deal. We hoped to find something that would get us in to the Art Institute and the Portland and Seattle museums.

We ultimately chose The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which also gets us in to the Art Institute, The Met and some others in NY, the DeYoung in SF, a bunch of museums in Sacramento, and a bunch of museums around the Pacific NW (but, alas, not Portland or Seattle). It is all very exciting – I’m thinking we should take a train trip to Minnesota next summer to visit our museum – not to mention all the trips to NY and SF I think this should justify.

At first, a very taciturn man at the Art Institute said we couldn’t get in with our Walker Art Center cards. I had just pulled out my iPhone to show him where on his website it said we could, when he looked at another page in his little book and said “Oh, here it is” and then (grudgingly, it seemed to me) gave us our tickets.

Lis wanted to go first to the Thorne Miniature Rooms – she had read about them online and was fascinated by them. And, indeed, they were pretty amazing. After a while, however, I had had my fill of tiny furniture, and decided to explore the other collections (I think Lis could have stayed in the Miniature Rooms collection all day).

I went to the second floor and looked at the Impressionists (lots of Renoir and Monet) and the early Europeans (fair amount of El Greco). I had a great time at first, but then ran out of gas and was mostly wandering aimlessly. It was still pleasant, but I didn’t do the really immersing myself in the works that I like to do when I’ve got more in me.

Met up with Lis about 20 minutes before the museum closed at 5 – we went and looked at Chagall’s America Windows and the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, then wandered the gift shop a bit before they tossed us out.

We’d both like to go back and explore a little more, particularly the Modern Wing, plus there are a couple paintings we didn’t see that we’d like to (Hopper’s Nighthawks and Van Gogh’s The Bedroom).

We had an indifferent dinner of burgers and fries in a hole-in-the-wall burger place across the street from the Museum, primarily because my out-of-gas-ness made it impossible for me to participate in looking around for something better. Then we headed back to the hotel.

I will mention here that we went to and from the museum by bus, using the 3 day bus passes we had purchased at Jewel-Osco for $14 each. We love using mass transit when visiting big cities (makes us feel less like tourists and more like part of the city), and The James is particulary well-situated for this – just a couple blocks from a bus stop that will get us quickly to the Art Insitute, Millenium and Grant Parks, The Aquarium, Planetarium and Field Natural History Museum, etc, etc

Once back at the hotel, we fired up the projector in the Media Room and watched How Do You Know with Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd (look closely to see Lis (Vanna) in the lower left corner of the picture). It was super great, partly because the movie was much better than I had been expecting (it was really quite good), and partly because watching a movie in the Media Room is AWESOME!!! We are going to watch another movie tonight, and even toyed briefly with the idea of “How can we do one of these at home??”

Yesterday was a pretty quiet day – we had breakfast and went to Marshall’s Home Goods, as Lis mentioned in the previous post about the James, and then Cathy and Claudia went home and we went back to bed.

Round about 2pm we decided that we might be needing some lunch, but we didn’t want much – especially since we had decided on an early dinner to avoid the hipster late diners. Cathy had told us that we needed to have an authentic Chicago-style hot dog at least once during our stay, so we went out in search of that. My sweetie Yelped, and found Portillo’s, only a few blocks away – and so there we went and had our dog (eagle-eyed readers will note that it is a Portillo’s dog pictured in the Wikipedia link re: Chicago-styled hot dogs).

We were charmed by the Portillo’s building – sort of a funky food court with lots of Chicago memorabilia and oddities on the walls and ceiling. The hot dogs were really good (and, Cathy, you will be pleased to know that I had all the fixings except the peppers).

Across the street was this huge McDonald’s I had seen a couple times before – old fashioned golden arches and huge (3 or 4 stories) with cantilevered glass and bronze statues of Ronald McDonald and such. We wandered over and took our pictures with Ronald and then went inside – definitely the coolest McDonald’s I’ve ever been in. The entire second floor was a coffee shop and McDonald’s museum of sorts. Very fun.

Back to the hotel, and back to lounging in bed until dinner. For dinner, we walked around the corner to Roy’s, one of our favorite places since Lis’ dad took us to lunch there in Carmel a few years back. Rather than bread, they put down a big bowl of edamame, which we were able to eat properly, thanks to the edamame eating lesson we’d received from Cathy on Saturday (thanks, cuz!!). Then we had salads and desserts, which were very yummy.

And then back to the hotel and back to bed 🙂

Up early and on our way to Chicago. But, ere we leave the Quad Cities, let me talk up a few of its sites: We had lunch at Cafe Fresh in Moline, which was really good, plus they have this cream cheese pickle thing, which is a dill pickle smothered in cream cheese and wrapped in a slice of deli meat (ham, I think) – seriously yummy. And afterwards, we had dessert at Lagomarcino’s, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, and the best ice cream sundae I’ve ever had (very sad to read that Mr. Lagomarcino passed away the very day after we enjoyed his wonderful establishment).

I must also give a shout out to Lis’ kin – her Uncle Frank, Aunt Carol, cousin Cathy, and nieces (actually first cousins once removed, but whatever) Caroline and Claudia. They showed us a great time, plus Carol, Frank and Cathy have the best stripper names ever (Freckles Jackson, Briar Roxbury and Muffy Vielstrassa, respectively).

Note from Lis: I’m not sure my very well-mannered aunt and uncle would appreciate their stripper names being published in a blog. Just so you know, we helped them figure out their stripper names after Mary told them our cats’ most excellent stripper names (BonBon LeChocolat, Ginger Darlington, Tabby Gaston, and Lulu Petunia). My aunt seemed a little alarmed, so Mary explained the whole idea of stripper names and that is when we found out that theirs are the most fabulous ever (unlike my worst ever Roanoke 9th Avenue.) (Mary: I’ve always been pleased with my stripper name of Midnight Adams, but I think it pales in comparison to Muffy Vielstrassa…)

And now, on to Chicago. Cathy and Claudia drove us back to Chicago, and we got to The James around 12:30pm – too early to check in, so we left our bags with the bellman and went out in search of sustenance. Claudia had been wanting to eat at the Grand Lux Cafe, because of their Beignets, and it turned out to be one block away from the hotel – a sign from God, clearly. We ordered a bunch of appetizers and a couple salads and ate family style, then had the aforementioned beignets for dessert – they were divine. Claudia had picked out Lagomarcino’s for dessert yesterday as well – that girl knows her desserts!

We wanted to go to the Shedd Aquarium, but turned out they were closing early on that particular Saturday (bastards), so we went to the Adler Planetarium instead and saw one of their shows. Cathy and Claudia report being somewhat disappointed in the show, but Lis and I really liked it.

Afterwards we took a bus to Millenium Park to look at “The Bean” and some of the other sites. It was pretty cool, on many levels – the sites were neato, and the temperature was about 57 plus wind chill.

We walked back to the hotel along Michigan Avenue (AKA The Magnificent Mile), people- and building-watching along the way. I didn’t have my real camera with me, only my iPhone, but snapped pics anyway, and some of them turned out pretty well, particularly some of the shots of the Bean – I’ve posted them here.

We got back to the hotel around 6pm, retrieved our bags and went up to our rooms (we’d been upgraded to a loft – more about the room in another post, maybe). The plan was to stow our stuff and then figure out where to eat, but once in the room, my body made an announcement – “You are not leaving this room again tonight, Missy.” So, room service burger for me. Lis wasn’t sure what she wanted to do – by now it was nearing 8pm – but ultimately she stayed in, too, and had a burger as well. Cathy and Claudia ate at Lawry’s, across the street, which they said was quite good, plus had a funky 70’s ambience – I’d like to try it later in the week.

We are in Rock Island, Illinois, right now, fixin’ to head to Chicago in the morning. And how did this come to pass, you might ask?

Well, Lis has been wanting to visit Chicago for a while now. We actually had a trip planned for last year – the annual Square Dance convention was in Chicago, and we had a sleeper car booked on Amtrak, and were signed up for the fun badge tour, and it was going to be awesome!! But, alas, Lis’ mom got sick, and we had to cancel.

So here we are, one year later, minus the square dancing and the train, on our way to the Windy City. But first, we stopped off for a couple days to visit Lis’ aunt, uncle, cousin and nieces in the Quad Cities.

On Wednesday we flew from Portland to Chicago, on Southwest. Lis has about a million Southwest free drink coupons, so we evolved a plan. We packed an empty plastic screw top bottle in our carry on. Then I ordered 2 drinks (orange juice and rum), and when the flight attendants weren’t looking, poured the rum in to the flask (we are classy broads in that way). Lis was supposed to get drinks, too, but she wanted apple juice and wasn’t sure she could be believable ordering apple juice and rum. But, anyway, we have some booze for the fancy hotel 🙂

Our flight got in too late for the 3 hour continuation to the Quad Cities, so we stayed in Chicago. Originally, we were just going to stay in some chain motel by the airport, but then my Travel Planner Extraordinaire girlfriend scored us a room at the Sutton Place downtown.

We took a cab from the airport, and at first the cabbie ignored us completely – I figured “Oh, well – big city.” Then he fished around in this little cooler in the passenger seat, pulled out a couple waters and handed them to us, still without a word.

And then, all of a sudden, he turned in to our cheerful tour guide, pointing out the tourist sites, laughing at our jokes, getting in the correct lane so we could better see things, etc. He was very sweet. He also took a wrong turn right at our hotel, said “Oh, you would be there by now,” and TURNED OFF THE METER!

The Sutton Place was nice, but didn’t have free wi-fi and didn’t have coffee in the room, and I slept past the free coffee in the lobby, so that was a bummer.

Plus, the lack of wi-fi in the room meant I had to go down to the lobby to deal with a work issue (there is wi-fi in the lobby and hotel bar), and so inadvertently found myself in the middle of someone else’s job interview – these two guys in suits were conducting an interview with another guy in a suit. I was very bummed – it’s one thing to have to be exposed to a bullshit meeting, but a job interview is about a thousand times worse. And, I couldn’t leave until my own business was finished, because I needed the wi-fi. Very sad story indeed.

We checked out of the hotel, took a cab to Union Station (this cabbie ignored us completely until the end when, for a change of pace, he gave us a dirty look when we paid with a credit card), and took the California Zephyr to Princeton, IL, where Lis’ cousin and niece picked us up.

The train station was crowded and our train was delayed, but once aboard we had a lovely ride, and I was in an unusual (hormonal?) space where the heartland scenery kept moving me to tears.

We’ve had a lovely visit with Lis’ family, including two rousing games of Celebrity, and tomorrow will head back to Chicago, where we will spend the remaining 5 days of our trip at The James Hotel. Lis’ cousin Cathy and niece Claudia will accompany us for the first day – we have extensive plans to paint the town!! (In between our naps, of course).