Chicago Trip 2014 - Part Two

Once Meezy joined us at the hotel, we decided to get out and do some sight-seeing.  We started by going to Lincoln Square.  We thought it would be a cool place to walk around and see lots of shops and restaurants.  It was disappointing - not as large of an area as we had hoped for and no restaurants that looked appealing to us.  It did, however, have a neat toy store there (Timeless Toys) that Dutch had fun visiting.  After we finished there, we headed over to Navy Pier.  We found a restaurant with outside seating (Harry Caray's Tavern) so that we could enjoy the cool weather and check out the happenings on the water.  Dinner went well and we walked along the pier afterward and visited a couple of shops.  By this point, we were all tired, so we headed back to our hotel.

On Saturday, we were excited to meet up with my nephew, Mark, who is in training outside of Chicago.  We went to the Lincoln Park Zoo so we could catch up and Dutch could enjoy the animals. The zoo is awesome because it's free, open year-round, and you just walk right in at any entrance. Towards the end of our visit, it started raining, so we sought shelter in a cafe at the zoo.  A couple of Mark's classmates met us there and we had a nice, relaxing lunch.  Since it was still raining after lunch, we decided to part ways for a bit so Dutch could nap back at the hotel.  We had really wanted to do an afternoon cruise out of the harbor, but the weather prevented that.

After nap time, we met back up with Mark for dinner.  He took us to a cool area in the West Side where there were lots of fun restaurants.  It was busy since it was Saturday night, but we got seated quickly at The Little Goat.  The food was great and the company was even better! We had such a great time hearing about Mark's experiences and were reminded how much we miss hanging out with him.  As it was getting late and we had a travel day the next day, we decided to call it a night.  We dropped Mark off with friends and headed back to our hotel.

  
While we didn't get to do as much sight-seeing as we had wanted to because of the weather, we still had a great time together as a family.  I'm so glad we went on this trip and that Dutch got the experience of flying for the first time.  Hopefully there will be lots more traveling in our future.