Friday, September 25, 2015

Out and About: Chicago, Day 3

To read more about this trip, click HERE and HERE.

I barely took any pictures on Day 3 so I almost combined it with the post for Day 2. Eventually I decided that would make the post for Day 2 too long. Therefore, this will be the shortest of my posts in this series.

After we left DeKalb on Sunday morning, we took the scenic route back into the city, which was pleasant. Unfortunately, that also meant we got into town later than we intended, so we had some trouble finding parking before the game (and, subsequently, finding our car after the game, but that story is too humiliating for a public forum). Here are some pics from Soldier Field:

As someone who writes smut for a living, I have to say that "Bear Down"
has a slightly different meaning for me than it does for Bears fans.

Crowd shot.

Action shot.

After the game, we met a friend of mine for some deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's. Afterward, my brother dropped me off at my hotel, the Inn at Lincoln Park. I feel the need to publicly defend this little hotel. After booking my room, I made the mistake of reading the Yelp reviews, which were almost universally terrible and made it sound like I was going to get raped and murdered in my bed. However, I don't normally put much stock in Yelp reviews, so I proceeded to stay there. While my room was certainly small, and the hotel is obviously old, it was in no way gross or creepy or dark or any of the other terrible things I read on Yelp. Don't be afraid to stay there!

This hotel is a little over a mile from Wrigley Field. After I dropped off my stuff and rested for a bit, I decided to walk up there, just to say I'd seen it. I saw it:


I also saw some interesting things along the way: 

The Landmark Theaters here don't look like this.

This t-shirt made me laugh. Poor, beleaguered
Bears fans.

The Alley is, apparently, a "rock and roll department store." I liked the gargoyles. I also liked that I saw lots of people lurking nearby (even though it was closed) who looked exactly like the people you'd expect to see near a "rock and roll department store":


LA is well known for its numerous and confusing parking signs, but I can't say I've ever seen anything like the below sign here. How, exactly, does one know if a pile of snow is over 2 inches? Do Chicagoans have to carry rulers in their cars?


That's it for Sunday. The nearly 2.5 mile walk to Wrigley and back tuckered me out after a long day, so I went back to my cozy hotel room and relaxed.

2 comments:

Patricia said...

Looks like a great day for a game.

I always loved the signs in Boston that were very clear about when you couldn't park on a stretch of street because of street cleaning. It would say something like "the second and fourth Thursdays" and they would ticket you if you ignored the sign and parked there. People really paid attention.

Yelp reviews! I've been taking my pants to the same place for over 10 years to be hemmed and it's always been fine. But I needed pants hemmed in July and made the mistake of reading the reviews and even though I've only had good experiences, the comments made me worry so much I ended up hemming the pants myself. Which saved me $20.00, so that was good, but never again will I read those reviews.

balyien said...

It WAS a great day for a game! A little hot in the sun, but not too bad.

We have the street sweeper signs here. Those are pretty straightforward, for example, "No Parking Wednesday 2 p.m. - 4 p.m." The problem is when there are two other signs attached to it, such as "2 hour parking 6 a.m. to 6 p.m." "No parking 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Zone 5 permit exempted." Etc., etc. It can get a little confusing.

I'm still not sure how you're supposed to know when snow is piled up over 2 inches though. If it's way over 2 inches, sure, but when it's between, say 2-4? No way to eyeball that. I wonder if parking enforcement actually measures it?

Yelp reviews are the worst! I love the place I go to get my nails done, and they have terrible Yelp reviews. People just love to go online and complain. I typically never look any place up on Yelp, but I'm super paranoid about bed bugs and I wanted to see if anyone had mentioned them in the reviews for that hotel. Note: the reviews did not mention bed bugs, and the hotel didn't have any.