Monday, August 16, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Airport Hell
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Trip to Chicago
We went to dinner the first night at Dao Thai, in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago. It was nice, as usual whenever we get any sort of asian cuisine, Kevin orders too much! His eyes are always bigger than his stomach when it comes to Thai and Japanese.
Walked around downtown on Michigan Ave, passed the river, saw the city lit up at night. Kevin pointed out different buildings like the Chicago Tribune building, which he explained was built to include stones and bricks from other historically important sites. It's a gorgeous building.
We took a cab back to the mansion; it was an odd feeling walking into that house every night - so empty and quiet, it felt like we had the entire place to ourselves.
The second day we woke up relatively early, well, Kevin woke me up with tons of kisses earlier than I would have liked, but it was nice. We ate breakfast downstairs in the dining room - only ones there. They brought us pancakes made from scratch topped with strawberries and powdered sugar. After breakfast we walked downtown.
We had dinner the second night at Geja's - it was an amazing experience and I suggest that anyone who is in Chicago and wants to have a really great/interesting meal checks it out. It's a fondue restaurant, very dimly lit with exposed brick walls. Extremely romantic. Our waitress was terrific. We started off with a cheese fondue, and the house salad. The cheese fondue was a combination of cherry brandy, and gruyere cheese and white pepper - they provided different breads, grapes, and apple slices to dip into the cheese fondue. The second course (main course) was shrimp, beef, chicken, scallops, lobster, and an array of vegetables. I'm a fondue virgin, and assumed that we would just be dipping things in cheese and chocolate all night, I was very wrong. The main course is cooked (by YOU!) in soybean oil on the skewer and they provided about 8 different dipping sauces for the food once it was cooked. The scallops were incredible. Dessert was melted chocolate with an orange liqueur on top that the waitress lit so that we could toast the marshmallows over the flame, and once the alcohol burned off we were able to dip the marshmallows, pound cake, strawberries, melon, and pineapple into the melted chocolate.
I was extremely full after that meal to say the least. It was incredibly romantic, they had a man who played spanish and classical guitar while we ate. It gave Kevin and I a chance to talk, and relax and enjoy one another's company. After we finished everything, we decided to go to a cute supermarket in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago to pick up a bottle of wine to bring back to the hotel.
Sunday we woke up a little bit later, had breakfast at the hotel, and walked downtown to the Old Navy so that we could get flip flops. About a half a mile from the Old Navy I couldn't take it anymore and we hailed a cab. I have so many blisters and cuts on my feet from walking around Chicago over the past 4 days. We ate lunch/dinner at Gino's East pizzeria. Had my first real slice of Chicago style deep-dish pizza, since I don't think Uno's truly counts. It was pretty good, I think I just enjoyed sitting in the sun on the terrace of the building overlooking the streets and talking with Kevin more than I enjoyed the food.
We walked down to Navy Pier after the pizza and laid in the grass for an hour or so talking about our pasts, the future, and everything we could think of more or less. After a while we decided we should get started on the trek back to the hotel. It's about a 3 and a half mile walk. We stopped and took pictures every now and then, enjoying the sun and the beautiful views of the lake with all of the sail boats sitting in the water. We got into a water fight, and continued to tease each other for the rest of the hour or so walk back to South Calumet Ave. He makes me laugh so hard, I love it and him.