Chicago!

Me and Rey in front of the bean sculpture at Millennium Park.

We have been having a blast after being delayed in Houston for 5 hours! Yes, we suffered through a horrible delay because of the weather. If you all remember, Wednesday's weather was terrible. We drove through the rain to the airport and couldn't find a place to park. We finally parked over in the International flights terminal and we ran to our flight. Thank goodness we had our boarding passes so all we had to do was check our bags. As it turned out, we were delayed for 5 hours anyway.

Once in Chicago the evening event was over so we just grabbed something to eat and then went back to our beautiful hotel room. The Drake is such a beautiful hotel! If you go to Chicago you should definitely stay there.

Thursday I was in the conference all day and Rey walked around all over town, literally. He ended up in the ESPN Zone but he got back in time for our evening event at a club, La Passage. Very cool place. The entrance is in an alley between Prada and Barney's. We had a really great time with the open bar and dancing. It was sponsored by Univision.

Friday I was in the conference again until 2 p.m. Rey went back to the ESPN Zone until I was done. We checked into our much cheaper hotel, the Travelodge. Not a great hotel, but a really good location.

Friday afternoon we visited the Buckingham Fountain, but it isn’t turned on until May. It was still very nice. It’s right on the edge of Lake Michigan, which is beautiful by the way. Did you know that it is the only Great Lake that is totally bordered by the United States? It isn’t bordered by Canada, like the other lakes.

From there we walked over to Millennium Park. What a cool place!! There are two really interesting sculptures there. One looks like a big silver bean. We walked all down Michigan Avenue and looked at all the shops on our way to see the Picasso sculpture. Across the street is another great sculpture, Joan Miro’s Chicago sculpture. And around the corner is Jean Dubuffet’s “M0nument with Standing Beast.” Chicago has an impressive collection of sculptures.

Then we went to Little Italy at ate at Frank Sinatra’s favorite restaurant, the original Rosebud. The Little Italy area is adorable. The houses around there are very nice. After walking around for a while and taking a picture with the Joe DiMaggio statue we had some coffee at the Starbucks. I knocked out really early because I was so tired.

This morning we got started again and we went to a ton of places. We visited Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears. From there we went to the National Museum of Mexican Art. Very inspiring. Then American Girl for a gift for my daughter, Navy Pier, the Disney store, and the John Hancock tower. At the Navy Pier we ate at the Billy goat Tavern and Grill. It’s the place that the Saturday Night Live skit, “Cheeseberger, cheesberger, chips, no fries,” is based on. After that the funniest thing happened.

Rey wanted to go to the neighborhood where he lived as a baby. The way his parents have told him the story, the neighborhood was very ghetto with a lot of gang activity. What we found was far from that. Turns out that they lived in what is now called the East Village. It’s a really funky party of town, very eclectic and very much like our Montrose.

Rey remembered that a guy that he met Thursday told him that there were some good bars on Division St. Rey checked his GPS on his extra phone and found out that we were right around the corner from where he used to live. We asked a couple passing by and they confirmed that we were right near Division and close to the bars Rey had heard about. We walked right around the corner and found a street lined with cute small bars and restaurants.

We ended up at Phyllis’ Musical Inn listening to a pretty good band. Coincidentally they turned on the Rockets Utah game of the playoffs and Rey enjoyed watching that. We finished the night with pizza at Pizza Metro and then back to the hotel room so Rey could finish watching the game.

Tomorrow we’re off back home and to the kids. I miss them!