Sunday in Chicago

Okay so I left off on Friday night... Saturday I got up and hitch-hiked a ride on the conference shuttle. (The conference hotel was two blocks from our hotel... but the actually conference was another 45 minute shuttle ride south).

All day Saturday I attended the Midwest Child Life Conference held on the University of Chicago campus.


Mean while, Kyle walked a little more of the city streets and went to the Planetarium. Saturday night we had reservations at a little Italian place near our hotel.  We were also celebrating the fact that we had met 4 years ago on that Saturday evening - well it was a Monday evening when we met, but it fell on a Saturday this year... anyway on with my story.

Sunday was our last day. I had two workshops at my conference, which I decided to skip out on. SSShhhh, don't tell. LOL I was actually kind of disappointed in the ones I attended Saturday and didn't want to mess with transportation to GET to the University Campus, so we decided to just take another site seeing day.

We started off with a little 'pick me up' stop at the scrumptious Starbucks and a moment to check our email and sports scores:


Then proceeded on toward the Chicago Tribute building


If you've ever seen the CSI:NY episode where Mac Taylor gets clues that lead him to the Tribune Tower then you know what I'm about to talk about. The Tribune building is covered in samples of rock from all over the world


Can you see them sticking out?  Here, here is a sample from Missouri:


There were a lot more rocks than what I list here, but these were the ones I got pictures of:
Antarctica: U.S. Navy Expedition 1947
Kansas - John Brown's Cabin
Aachen City Hall - Germany
City Palace Potsdam, Germany 1669
Pearl Harbor - Hawaiian Islands
California - Petrified Redwood Forest
House of Parliament - London, England
Great Wall China
Dome of St. Peter's Cathedral - Rome, Italy
Holy Door - St. Peter's Rome
Minnesota - Site of Kensington Rune Stone
Lincoln Home - Springfield, Illinois
Clementine Hall - Pope's Residence
The Alamo - Texas
World Trade Center - 2001 New York

After walking that building, we went over by the river and walked along there for a while.


I have a little obsession with my new lens... okay I admit, it's a BIG obsession. I just love the bokeh it produces (the blur in the background) Which is caused from having a really wide (small number) aperture, I won't bore you with all the details.


We even walked in view of the Sear's Tower.  EH hem I mean the 'Willis Tower' as they now call it.


We walked down through the 'Chicago Loop'.  All the elevated trains (the el) meet in the middle of town and make a loop in the middle of the city.


We grabbed some lunch then headed back to our hotel to grab our bags and hop on the subway to the airport


We arrived 2 hours early at our gate, but luckily there was another flight boarding at 2:45 for Minneapolis, so going against what Kyle had said - I went ahead and asked the lady if there was any way we could get on that flight since ours wasn't coming until 4:50.  She said YES!!  So we got the last two seats on the plane, they weren't together but it was only an hour flight. We got home before we were even suppose to be in the air. We were able to pick up Harpo Sunday night and call it a night!

I can't wait til we can go back!!! :-)


That concludes our trip, back to dining room work...
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