Sunday 10/19/08

Chi-Town

It is a glorious morning in downtown Chicago. John pops into the corner bakery next door and grabs some really good coffee and a couple bagels for breakfast while Mary becomes beautiful. We spend the morning just wandering through parks and then up the Miracle Mile past all the big stores. The Vikes are in town today for a noon start against the Bears and most of the folks we see are wearing number 54 Jerseys and heading for Soldier Field. We keep a low profile.

Just before noon we think we should find a place for lunch with a TV, so stop at the Weber Grille on State Street and grab a table in the bar. Apparently Mr. Weber of the grill fame was a Chicago fellow and this place cooks on commercial style Weber grills in an open kitchen. John has a BBQ beef brisket sandwich and Mary has a nice black bean soup and we both hit the bloody Mary bar for a little Sunday treat. The bloody bar has chucks of grilled sausage and smoked cheese so Mary supplements her soup with a snack. We watch the first quarter of a back and forth game, maintaining our low profile.

After a little break and the rest of the first half in our room we head down Monroe Street to catch the afternoon matinee of Jersey Boys. We’ve heard good things and grabbed a couple of great seats (8th row center aisle) from the box office Saturday night. The play is terrific with great music and solid performances and there is a rousing standing ovation at the end. Very fun!

Back to our room to catch the scores (stupid Vikings) and some quiet time. John thinks he is coming down with something so we stay close for dinner at the Italian Village. This is old school Chicago Italian. John gets a plate of sausages smothered in onions, peppers and red sauce with a side of mostaccioli, and Mary gets the Italian Sausage sandwich with the same sort of stuff on it. These are huge servings and neither of us can finish everything. We stumble back to our hotel for more baseball, football and early snoozing.

Saturday 10/19/08

Flatlanders

Our visit to Pittsburgh is short and sweet. We get a mid-morning start whistling northwest and back to the last 40 miles of the Pennsylvania turnpike. This may be our longest driving day of the entire trip but we gain an hour when we hit central time so fool ourselves into thinking it won’t be so bad.

The PA turnpike runs right into the Ohio turnpike and the mountains are gone. The next 400 miles will be farms and tractor-trailers providing our entertainment so one of us is hoping to find the Buckeye football network to pass the time. Rats, the game doesn’t start until 3:30. We stop for lunch at a turnpike rest area and are pleasantly surprised to find a Panera where John gets the chipotle chicken sandwich and Mary has a big fat chicken salad sandwich.

We swap driving back and forth and the Buckeye network meets the Michigan State football network so we can hear the whole blow-out if we want. Mary finishes the drive into Chicago, our stop for the next two nights, while John navigates our way to the hotel. Mary has nailed the Palmer House for $75 per night and John parlays that once again into a corner king room on the 17th floor. We both do our jobs again.

It is almost 8:00 as we take a leisurely stroll around the loop thinking that we will just pop into some restaurant for dinner. The first four places tell us that it will be an hour, an hour and a half, etc. We wish we had been in the restaurant business in downtown Chicago. We finally give up at Harry Caray’s and put our name on the waiting list. Mary nails a table in the bar among 200 people who are standing and we sip a beer while we watch two football games and one baseball game. We get a table earlier than promised and John has the Vesuvius Chicken (the menu said it was the best in town) and Mary has a pretty good Spinach Papardelle Pasta with Bolognese sauce. We are so hungry that we could eat anything but this was good.

The streets are still full of people when we leave and it is hard to believe that we are in the middle of a global financial crisis. The economy is pretty good in downtown Chicago on a Saturday night. We hustle back to see the first few minutes of Sarah Palin on SNL, but can’t stay awake for her later appearance.