Downtown, downtown!

Benziger Family in Chi-town 2019

Downtown

What you see is what you get girl

Don't ever forget girl

Ain't seen nothing yet until you're

Downtown

Have you heard the song, "Downtown, downtown" by Macklemore? Our one trip this summer was a long weekend going downtown - to Chi-town. A quick 1 hour direct flight from Duluth makes it an easy get-a-way with lots of great restaurants and cultural opportunities for the big and little kids. Luck for me, our Thursday night flight was delayed two-hours so that I finished reading all my echocardiograms and cleaned out my Epic in basket with just enough time to spare to get home, change clothes, finish packing and leave our house exactly 1 hour prior to flight departure and still drive to the airport, park, check a bag, get through security, and buy some candy before the plane started boarding! Gotta love the DLH international airport!

"Long" security lines at the airport < 1 hour prior to flight departure.

The view from the 19th floor condo

We landed late and took an Uber into the city to the Benziger's condo. The views are always stunning but slowly other buildings on Wolf Point are getting in the way (and I the south tower is approved, will completely block the view of the river). We can enjoy it while we can!

We took the water taxi to Chinatown and walked through the main plaza with bronze statues of all the Chinese zodiac animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. 2019 is a year of the Pig. We stuffed ourselves at the Phoenix for dim sum (Chinese brunch with small plates of bite-sized dumplings and steamed buns made to share with family and friends).

On the water taxi

Dim Sum

Next we headed to the Field Museum, named at Marshall Field, who donated $1 million dollars to help start this permanent collection of artifacts representing art, culture, zoology, botany, geology, anthropology and history after the World's Fair in 1893. After the fair ended, about 50,000 items from its exhibits eventually became the start of our collection. Some of these original objects and specimens are on display today, like the mastodon skull, the Tiffany and Co. gem collection and many of the dioramas! They have since acquired many additional objects, such as Egyptian mummies and Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, that was discovered in 1990 along a riverbank in South Dakota and dates back 67 million years. There was a special exhibit on "Fantastic Bug Encounters" highlighting that bugs are all around us and yet we often pay little attention to their intricate behaviors and impact on our everyday lives. We all had fun discovering what life is like as an insect and imaging what living at the time of T. Rex would have looked like. For all the science folks, I highly recommend a trip to the Field Museum next time you are in Chicago.

Field museum

Bugs up close

Giant bugs

Touching cockroaches

Dinos!

Sue the T-rex

Tiffany glass and gems

Downtown Chicago

We headed to Maggie Daley park to cool off in the kids fountains and play on the tall slides. The kids then wandered over to Crown Fountain in Millenium Park where they enjoyed getting soaked by the faces on the giant screens.

Crown fountain

Getting soaked!

Crown Fountain

For dinner, we walked to Frontera for delicious upscale Mexican food. The "Dos, Tres, Quatro Leches" dessert was definitely a highlight!

Walking to dinner

4 leches

On our walk back to the condo, we stopped to watch the Art On the MART, a free public art show. It was a mix of cool modern graphics projected from amazing technology including 34 light projectors with audio that is streamed from your phone. The performance changes night to night but includes spoken word, modern dance, Shakespeare, and other "Soliloquies" projected onto the side of the Merchandise Mart along the river.

Can you see the people walking across the building?

More ArtOnTheMart show

Saturday was a lazy day. The kids slept in and we went out for breakfast at a french bakery near the condo. Then we headed up to the Newberry Library book fair. The kids picked out some new picture books while we enjoyed getting a brief look at one of the oldest independent research libraries in the country, opened in 1887 with over 1.6 million books and 600,000 maps. Theo visited all the political tables in the park and was soon covered in pins supporting the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Planned Parenthood, and Save the Environment. We ate Chicago-style dogs and italian beef sandwiches for lunch and took a nap back at the condo before heading out for dinner at Momotaro (Momotaro menu), an upscale Japanese restaurant and arguably the best Japanese restaurant in the country. We grabbed the kids wood fire pizza by the slice and give them their tablets so we could enjoy our A5 ebi uni maguro and and Momomaki tuna sushi rolls. The kids enjoyed the edamame and green tea ice cream for dessert. We watched the Art On the Mart again but this time on a nice park bench off to the side of the river away from the crowds.

On Sunday, we met up with Brent and Steph for brunch at Bar Siena in the Fulton Market neighborhood (a few blocks from where we had eaten dinner the night before).

Hanging out with Brent and Steph

This old industrial area of the West Loop is now called "Restaurant Row" and the area is now home to a Lululemon store (upscale yoga clothes), Google offices and a trendy mid-century modern hotel and Peruvian rooftop bar, Cabra. It was great to catch up for a while and hear about their big move out west to Seattle! We'll definitely have to go back to Washington State to visit them next year. In the afternoon, we headed back to Millenium park to play in the fountains again and took a few pictures by the bean before heading back to take the El to the airport.

They kids enjoyed riding the plane, trains and automobiles (and Ubers and water taxis) but didn't like the smell of the city. Theo says it smells like garbage and there aren't enough trees. He is clearly not a city kid. We are so fortunately to have the Benziger condo to crash at for a weekend and was bummed that they weren't in town to meet up but we'll hopefully see them again soon.