Thursday we decided to do a little walking and shopping on the Magnificent Mile. We still had a few gifts we wanted to get. We had heard about this store in one of the nice malls on the Mag Mile called Vosges Haut Chocolat (don't ask me to pronounce it!. They had gourmet chocolate, meaning that the chocolate bar normally had unusual things in it. For example, one of them had hickory smoked almond, one had some kind of chili peppers in it, and one had plantains. We got some gifts for our families and then hurried to catch the metro to the Bucktown/Wicker Park area for a food tour.
The food tour was amazing and we would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Chicago. It was $45 a person but included lunch and it was a very good lunch. The tour lasted over 3 hours and also included history and information about the neighborhood. These are all the places we visited:
George's Hot Dogs - Here we had a true Chicago-style hot dog, which does not include ketchup. Instead, it had things like relish, onions, tomatoes, celery salt, peppers, and a couple of other ingredients. I don't typically like hot dogs but this one was actually pretty good.
Hot Chocolate - The chef at this location is world-famous and we got to try an iced hot chocolate with a homemade marshmallow. I have never had a homemade marshmallow, but it was really amazing. It made me want to learn how to make them.
The Goddess and Grocer - This place was owned by someone who used to travel with rock stars and cater the band's meals, so we knew it had to be good. We tried a grilled vegetable salad that had veggies (of course) with goat cheese and a vinagerette-type dressing.
Piece - Here we got to sample one of their beers (it was also a microbrewery) and a slice of New Haven-style pizza. Though Chicago is known for the deep dish, the deep dish pizza takes a good 45 minutes to prepare, so apparently a lot of Chicagoans still eat the thin crust pizza.
Sultan's Market - We got a chance to sample our first Falafel Sandwich, as we were each given a half of a sandwich which was still pretty good. Falafel is made of garbanzo beans and a few other ingredients. It was actually really good, so we've looked up all the places to get Falafel in Evansville.
iCream - This was our final stop. AT this ice cream shop, you could be creative and put together your own ice cream and they make the ice cream right in front of you, with liquid nitrogen and everything. First, you choose whether you want ice cream, milkshake, yogurt, etc. and then you choose the base (yogurt, soy milk, whole milk, fat free milk, organic milk, etc.) and then the flavor and the toppings. We sampled a small scoop of white chocolate ice cream made with regular milk. The mix-ins were cream soda and Nutella. It sounded kind of wierd but was actually pretty amazing.
We absolutely loved this tour. We met a lot of great people, including an Indian family from South Africa. They were touring parts of the US and their next stop was in Cancun for a week-long family reunion. We exhanged information with one of the guys and now we are facebook friends with him. Maybe he can help us plan our future trips to Africa and India! Even though the tour was over 3 hours, Anya did really well. She actually liked it because we got to stop and eat a lot, and she ended up sleeping in her stroller through the neighborhood tour part, so it worked out perfectly.
After the tour, we went back to a couple of the places and got some snacks for later because we had tour-exclusive coupons. Then, we went back to the hotel for showers. After that, we went to the Art Institute of Chicago since it is open later on Thursday nights and we weren't very hungry for dinner because of all the food we ate at lunch. We just did a short tour of the building and looked for only the must-see pieces of art, stopping at the interesting ones on the way. Even though we don't know much about art, we still enjoyed it.
After finishing up at the Art Institute, we went to The Billy Goat Tavern, which has apparently been made famous by a Saturday Night Live skit with John Belushi. We just had cheeseburgers and chips as a late dinner and then went back to the hotel to have our goodies. Unfortunately, my stomach was bothering me that night, so no wine for me!
I also forgot to mention that on Tuesday after the beach, we got a chance to walk around Millineum Park, which was fun. There are several sculptures, including the famous "bean" that you can see your reflection in, which is pretty cool. There is also a sprinkler-type sculpture that I can't remember the name of, but it has pictures of Chicagoans on either side whose facial expressions change and in the middle are sprinklers. It was really hot the day we were there, so lots of people were playing in the fountain. There is also the Lurie Garden which was meant to mimic a field of wildflowers. In addition, there is a huge outdoor auditorium that offered concerts. They had a lot of free summertime concerts and events going on in the park but we didn't get a chance to see any of these...maybe next time!
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