Chicago

Well, I went to Chicago for the weekend. Love it. Lots of things to do downtown including several fountains and sites. Spent a lot of time yesterday at a place called Navy Pier. Lot of history behind it, but it has since been turned into a family fun atmosphere with lots of restaurants, beer stands, and shops....right on the Chicago River/ Lake Michigan waterfront. We also stayed to see Cirque de Shanghai, which was pretty cool. Lots of very flexible, balanced, strong people twisting and stacking themselves in weird ways, balancing themselves on slack wire, and doing amazing rope acts among other things. We had deep dish pizza the evening that we got in, which is always fantastic. The next morning, we went to a local farmer's market, which was small but cute. I bought some salsa and some freshly baked apple cinnamon bread. We leave today to go back home. It was a short, but very fun trip. Navy Pier is a fun place to hang out. Very touristy, but hey....I'm a tourist. A friend of ours took several hours to paint us a painting of the harbor and skyline of Chicago. I really like his art. He turns a white canvas into a great painting in a matter of a couple of hours. So we bought that painting from him and he will be working on another for us in the future. If you're interested, look up Nathan Mellott on facebook, or he may have a website to look at his paintings (http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ncm221/art.html). So Chicago was fun. A return trip will happen.