A big highlight of my trip was my trip-within-a-trip to Chicago. This trip was planned waaaay back in May when the tickets to U2 went on sale. Knowing that U2 tends to sell out fast and furious and knowing that I wanted to see them at some point, Sara and I decided upon Chicago as our venue of choice. It just so happened that I was chatting with my Aunt Carol, who is the Director of Programming at NBC Chicago, the very day that NBC was able to secure a block of tickets. She had no idea I would even want to go, so thank goodness we had said conversation. I got four tickets and before I could say Bono, Andrew let me know that he was in. Not a surprise since U2 is his favorite band.
The trip was phenomenal. First of all, we totally lucked out on the weather! Weather in Chicago can be dicey. It is not always blue skies and baseball games like Ferris Bueller. I spent many vacations there growing up visiting my grandparents and it was not uncommon to be cold on the Fourth of July or boiling on Labor Day. The earlier forecasts were showing rain and cold for the concert day (outdoors at Soldier Field, no less), so my ever-thinking Mom had packed us rain ponchos and blankets. So glad we didn’t need them!
Everyone converged on the City Saturday afternoon. Sara and I driving up, Andrew representing the west coast and my sis-in-law, Christie, representing the East. Carol hooked us up with a room at the Intercontinental Hotel downtown and the central location on Michigan Ave. was great.
If only service in Chicago could have been equally as great. Or even marginally as great. Fractionally great. We had some seriously bad service! One night we hit the wine/chocolate bar downstairs in our hotel. It took oh, maybe 20 minutes to be waited on, despite the place being relatively empty. The waiters looked like they should’ve been working in a garage, and the portions were tiny! So maybe we should have ordered more than 3 pieces of chocolate and one flight of wine, but at $20 a pop, puhleeze. Maybe it was our incessant giggling when we tried to carve up the miniscule chocolate treats into three equal portions. Or tried to snort the decorative cocoa powder on the plate. Or passed around each taste of wine twice and complained one smelled like sprouts. I thought it was perfectly normal, but whatever.
The other place we had bad service was at the Dana Hotel. We were starving. Okay I was starving. We never did get dinner the night before or after the concert, so by breakfast, I was a tad famished. Little did we know that Chicagoans are not big on breakfast. Probably because they are still sitting on the Kennedy at breakfast time. We walked a few miles blocks and eventually saw a sight to behold—people eating! We went in and were promptly seated. All good signs. But then the unthinkable happened. After placing our order, no food was served for approximately 57 minutes. Everyone around us was eating. Just not us. Our pouty waitress did manage to bring some toast for Andrew, but how was he supposed to know it was also for Sara? Oops. Just when we were about to dine and dash (or just dash?) our food came. It was pretty good, but I’m pretty certain we’ll never eat there again. Especially since our pouty waitress is probably looking for the rest of her tip.
On to the concert. I’m sorry, this blog is really in no particular order. Probably due to the low concentration of oxygen on this plane. Just pretend it’s Pulp Fiction. You'll probably want to read it twice.
The concert was amazing. It was certainly the largest one I’ve been to with probably one of the biggest names in music today. I think maybe only a handful of other stars would be able to sell out such venues… one being Michael Jackson, but we all know how that story ends.
The stage was this massive spaceship that really looked like a bear claw. No, really. I was looking for the joystick and button to pick up the Edge and drop him into the prize box. This show would make a fan out of anyone. I really had a great time. The stage had all sorts of moving parts and bridges that took the band out to a catwalk in the crowd. The lights were amazing too. The whole dang thing was just cool. See pix below.
Our last day in the City was spent marching around downtown. I really love downtown and I truly feel like I could live there. We tried to take a water taxi to Sears Tower, but the taxi attendant couldn’t be bothered to do our job and tell us the right boat to get on. After being told by other passengers that the employee was wrong (and noticing that the boat was indeed facing the wrong direction), we deboarded and decided to just walk. Great idea!
We visited the Sky Deck at the Sears Tower. It's this new deck that extends about 5 feet beyond the building made completely out of some sort of plexiglas. Totally rad!!
Oh yes, we also got a tour of NBC studios, courtesy of my Aunt, and got to watch a taping of the evening news. When it was a wrap, we got to pose for a picture with the two anchors. Can you spot the news anchors?
1 comment:
Cool. I didn't realize U2 was doing such a big show. It does look like a claw. You should have looked for the slot to deposit a quarter into. Glad you had fun despite the service.
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