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0Miss C and I flew back to the USA a bit earlier than Joel this year. I wanted to have a bit extra time to spend with my family, and especially my new little squish of a nephew. I couldn’t imagine doing our normal route – Bangkok to Kentucky, USA – 3 flights and over 25 hours. That seemed to be an insurmountable challenge when traveling alone with a very active and impatient 18 month old.
When I started looking around at options, I found a Bangkok to Chicago flight on Cathay Pacific that was only 19 hours. Thinking of an offer my aunt had made a couple years ago, I asked if she might still be willing to drive up to Chicago and pick us up. Gratefully she obliged and we decided to try out the new route. To see how that flight went, check out my recent review.
Another one of my fun aunts decided to join her and we decided to take the opportunity to make a girls weekend out of it and stay a couple of nights in Chicago.
There is no jet-lag like the jet-lag you experience from flying from the other side of the world, but even worse than that is baby jet-lag. Miss C had her days and nights totally flipped, and understandably so. So, we took it pretty easy and were pretty flexible with our plans during our short two night stay.
We booked the Holiday Inn North Shore in Skokie, Illinois, a north side suburb of Chicago. The hotel provided convenient access to the airport as well as downtown Chicago without the price tag. Chicago is easy to access via the expressway, but I would recommend driving the more scenic Lake Shore Drive (Hwy 41). Watching holiday-goers enjoy themselves on the banks of Lake Michigan while we cruised along, wind in our hair and a nice view of the skyline in front of us made a few extra minutes of travel time totally worth it. Lake Shore Drive also affords convenient parking access for downtown attractions, especially Navy Pier.
In the parking lot of the hotel is Sander’s Family Restaurant Pancake House. They offer up fantastic lunch and dinner options as well as serving breakfast all day. Based on the hustle and bustle the place was in on Saturday morning for breakfast, I concluded that it must be a quite popular local option. Everything we had was fantastic, but I would especially recommend the omelettes. They have nearly endless choices of fillings to suit anyone’s taste-buds. We enjoyed their food more than once during our short weekend stay.
Typically I plan my trips to the most minute of details, but not this time. I left most of the planning up to my aunts and was happy to just be able to relax and go along with the flow. Our plans were to visit the Navy Pier and do a bus tour of the city of Chicago. We drove to the Navy Pier and parked nearby. We had a nice stroll around the pier, enjoying the view of boats in the distance. Little Miss C loves “wab-bur” (water) and enjoyed just looking through the railing and pointing out all the water there was to see. Being used to Thailand we were super cold, hence the coats and sweaters in the photos! However, I could have sat there by the water all day and watched the boats come in and out. However, since we only had one day, we were on our way pretty quickly! From their Navy Pier stop, we purchased tickets for Big Bus Tours hop-on, hop-off bus tour.
While I am all about exploring new places myself, and planning out attractions to the hour, with such a short time to enjoy Chicago, and while having jet-lag brain, the bus tour was a great solution. It afforded us the opportunity to see the highlights of Chicago without any planning effort on our part. Miss C slept comfortably in her Ergobaby carrier while we cruised around in comfort on the top of the bus. We were touring early in the day and had the bus almost completely to ourselves – later in the day the bus was
much more full.
My fa
vorite bus stop on the tour was the Millenium park stop, and not only because there is a Starbucks right at the stop (although that helps), but because of the “Cloud Gate” – better known as “the bean.” I would have loved to stay and play with my camera in the reflections of “the bean.” However, I got in a few shots before our hungry stomachs drew us out to track down dinner.
What trip to Chicago would be complete without enjoying famous, Chicago-style deep-dish pizza? We made sure to treat our stomachs to this iconic menu item before leaving the Windy City. But how could we choose just one pizza restaurant in Chicago to try and gain a
n impression of what Chicago-style is all about? Our choice was about 50% convenience and 50% word of mouth (tour guide recommendation). Pizano’s Pizza has six convenient Chicago locations, and renown deep-dish pizza. They also offer a thin crust pizza that according to their website, Oprah recommends as her favorite. It was my first time having Chicago-style pizza. I didn’t even know that the sauce was going to be on the top! However, it was a definite win. I will be hard-pressed to try any other pizzeria – I plan to be back at Pizano’s on future trips to Chicago.
Even though all of us were sleep-deprived and I am not sure my two aunts will volunteer to share a hotel room with a jet-lagged baby any time soon, I think we all had a great time. This trip afforded me just a glimpse at all Chicago has to offer. I look forward to exploring deeper in future visits.
