Team Lee: Trip to Chicago (Day 1, Sat. 1/10)

This was a very "spur of the moment" trip! I had called my sister earlier in the week to chat and she mentioned she planned on going to Chicago on Sunday to look for her wedding dress. She also mentioned that Joe's mom was driving up with her and our mom would drive over from IA. This sounded like so much fun and she mused that it would be neat if I could come too. Well, just a short time ago I had received notices from Southwest of sale fares and found that some of the best fares are to Chicago during January (hmmmm....wonder why ;) ). So I looked up the fares and they were still really cheap. At first, it was going to be a day trip but then I realized that they don't run the early morning flight on Sunday morning so by the time I got up there, it would only allow about 4 hrs for shopping before heading back to airport. After much discussion with husband, mom and sister, I was able to book a flight that would fly to Chicago on Saturday AM (and back to Nashville on Saturday night) and then found a reasonable hotel right on Michigan Avenue (the plusses of January!). A couple of days later I thought since hotel was set with double beds, etc. and flights so cheap, why not have our daughter come with! Her ticket was booked with only a day to spare but at still the same low price.

We had a blast! It was a really nice trip for the two of us and we got our fill of snow at the same time - good thing we wore our warm woolies along with boots, hats, etc. Saturday was very cold and very snowy but we did venture out and walk around some of the area around our hotel - the side streets are the best, great architecture to see.

While walking around it came to me that we weren't too far from Ed Debevic's and that our daughter had been deprived of the experience of eating there, all that time we lived in Chicago. I'm sure it had to do with the fact that the wait can be very long, especially with young children. We walked over there and, due to the snow, no wait on this day! Before we went though she was asking me about it and all I could think of to say to her is that the wait staff is rude to the customers but that it is fun to eat there - she wasn't too sure about that but she thought she'd try it anyway. Our waiter was rude but fun and we had a great time when they cranked up the music and the wait staff danced on the counters!