I go on vacations twice a year with a group of friends, some of whom are local and some of whom are not. Technically they are the friend group of my friend from church, and I was added to their trivia team during the Pandemic. Another local acquaintance ran a weekly trivia meetup via Zoom, and they needed a sixth person to round out the team. After the Pandemic, two of the original 5 got married, and my first friend decided we should meet on the regular whether anybody was getting married or not, so now we go on trips together. Usually we meet somewhere between Central Illinois and Upstate New York, where two of the group live, which means several of these trips have landed us in Ohio. But a for a couple of them, we've gone to Chicago, where Upstate New York Veterinarian Lady's brother lives.
Day One
So yesterday we left for the wilds of Chicago, a grand adventure featuring an extremely long car ride of about two hours. During this time I read almost half of Project Hail Mary.
We are staying in an air bnb condominium near Lake Michigan. We had to figure out how to get to the parking lot, then there was a great deal of anxiety (for me, anyway), as we backed into a tiny parking spot in a tiny alley. Then we had to figure out how to get into the building. Upstate New York Veterinary Lady's Husband called it a Reverse Escape Room.
Oh, initials would be good...
I am KK
My friend from church: T
Upstate New York folks: B and R (or R&B for a musical flare)
The Two Who Got Married: D and L
ANYWHO...
So we arrived about 2, got a bit settled but not all the way because they were still cleaning the airbnb. We had asked to be able to check in a little early because we had tickets to Drunk Shakespeare at 5, and technically checkin was at 4, which was a little tight.
Here is my room:
Okay, just the bed. Get a load of that headboard, though.
It's a nice place. But there are too many stairs. Also there are numerous "rugs" that are just animal skins tossed on the floor. Yes, they're real hides. I checked. Some smallish creature died to make a tiny rug for my room. I will probably trip on said rug at least once. It's disturbing.
Here's the cowhide from the living room:
Poor cow.
In any case, we dropped off our stuff and then headed for the train.I am not well-versed with the Chicago train system, although I've used it from time to time. It's been a hot minute. We visited in 2015 when we were looking at colleges for Child the Younger, and for a couple of seconds I felt like I knew what I was doing. Fortunately we had R's brother (M), who is local and Knows the Ropes. So we followed him like a gaggle of geese.
We took the Red Line to a stop where there was a Very Uncomfortable view of Tr-m- T-w-r. If this wasn't enough to make me sad, we walked right by this:
I love Woodz. I wanted to see Woodz. I was ecstatic when I found out he was going to be in Chicago. Until I checked the dates and discovered I was already committed to a trip to Atlanta for that week, where I'm going to see Mumford & Sons and visit with Child the Elder. Woodz is playing in Atlanta on the same day as the Mumford & Sons concert. I love Woodz, but apparently Woodz does not love me. Rude.
It was raining rather a lot--not dumping, but the skies were being pretty enthusiastic about making everything wet. But we had umbrellas, because we are grown-ass adults and can prepare for such things.
Drunk Shakespeare:
The Lion Theater is a tiny venue and completely different from what I expected (IDK what I expected). I didn't really get any good pics of the performance, but here's a shot of the venue before things got underway.
The play for the evening was Romeo and Juliet. The guy in the blue shirt, who described himself rather aptly as Dime Store Chris Pratt (he was far hotter than this picture indicates), played Romeo. He started the proceedings by tossing back four shots of Malort. Because it's Chicago.. The thrones in the front are for whoever wins the auction to sit in them, held at the beginning of the show. These folks got to ring a bell twice during the performance to have Romeo do a Shakespearean or physical challenge, and if he was not judged positively, he had to take another shot of Malort.
I took a couple of pics, which were blurry, and then decided not to take any more because I was enjoying the show too much. It was a lot of fun, and I think Shakespeare would have loved it. Was it faithful to the play? No. Okay, sort of. I hesitate to describe everything for fear of spoiling it for anyone else who might like to see it, but let's just say that at one point the swords were all replaced with dildos, and there was a running joke about Romeo's nipples.
Afterwards, we had dinner at a nearby Puerto Rican spot called The Jibarito Stop.
I didn't know what a Jibarito was, but it's a sandwich where instead of bread, they put stuff between two slices of fried plantain. It was freakin' delicious.
The thing to the left is an Alcapurria Fritter. The dough is made from green plantains and yucca, and it's stuffed with ground beef and cheese. I didn't like this as much, but mostly because it was a little heavier than I needed as a side dish.
After that we did some grocery shopping so we could make food for today, and then we went home and I collapsed.
So that was day one!