Chicago Trip: Part One

I have to split this tale up into parts cause seeing to whole thing at once may cause you discomfort in one sitting.  Anyhow, Amy, the Bandit, and I went to Chicago for 5 days last week because we heard that no one in Chicago was wearing headbands anymore AND they didn't know how to party properly.   We thought it was our moral imperative to rectify both problems, and although we knew that we would miss the Grunion terribly we felt that it was just too important not to go.

In case you don't know, to get to Chicago from Fayetteville, AR you go North to Joplin and then Northwest all the way through Missouri and Illinois.  I will save you the trouble of imagining what Missouri looks like between Joplin and St. Louis.

There are phone towers

and adult book/toy/video stores

The road in Illinois between St. Louis and Chicago looks like this:

Yup.  Corn, corn, and more corn (I'm not sure if this was popcorn or regular corn growing here).  After all that boredom, you see Chicago on the horizon.  And even though you can see that you are pretty close, it takes another hour to get where you need to go cause of the traffic.  Yippee!

We were staying with Andy and Shannon, but they weren't back from a vacation to Mexico when we arrived so the house sitter let us in to wait.   Their condo looks like one of those Real World houses from MTV. 

Floor to ceiling windows on one whole wall.

Several "lofty" things and cool lighting fixtures.

We had a beer and then decided to explore the area.   Seemed like a nice enough place.

But why do they lock up all the trees?

About a block away from the condo we found this place Mac's.

Right off the bat we knew we weren't in Fayetteville anymore cause we saw this flyer:

FIVE DOLLAR MIMOSAS?  We paid $1 for mimosas at the West End less than 3 days earlier.  Sheesh.  Luckily, they had french fries and Guinness. 

Notice that I immediately began to bring headbands back as soon as we got to town. 

The fries were really good and they were only about 6 bucks.  Actually not too bad for Chicago so they got a big thumbs up.  Incidentally, these fries on the first day ended up being the best ones we had during the whole trip.  Since we still had time before Andy and Shannon got back, we headed up the street.  I love drinking during the day cause it makes me feel rich...

The next stop was The Boundary.  We never found out what this place was the boundary between, but they had french fries and FRIED MACARONI AND CHEESE so we didn't care. 

There are many times that I am conflicted with this report, cause the fries at this place sucked but the fried mac and cheese was so amazing I want to start a whole new category of goodness.  It was literally cheapo Kraft mac and cheese breaded and fried.  It was so good that we didn't even care about the irony of paying 9 bucks for something that costs like 30 cents to make.

The Bandit got adventurous and ordered this weird beer that was quite good.

I tried to bring headbands back at The Boundary, but this obnoxious guy at the bar behind us sucked all the attention out of the place.  He was drunk and loudly dropping f-bombs about one of the sports teams (I forget which one).  It was great.  He must have run off like 10 people and at least 4 dogs.

TO BE CONTINUED...