Today we woke up early, ate breakfast and stopped at Borders so I could get a moleskin to journal through the trip. Side note, I am infatuated with moleskin journals, all kinds of them. They are sooooo awesome.
Okay so we drove for an hour or so and came into the windy city. Chicago was overcast but before I even fully went into the city I knew I would love it. The city rests next to Lake Michigan and the skyline holds one of the tallest buildings in the world, the Sears Tower. We drove on Lake Shore Dr. around the city through various parks and up to the north side of Chicago. We made it up to Evanston and drove through Northwestern College, which was right alongside the coast of the Lake Michigan. I am not sure I you have ever seen a great lake but take my word for it, they look like oceans. After that we drove by Wrigley Field and what was really neat was the surrounding buildings we installing stands on their roofs so people could see the game from them.
We then drove around til we found a local restaurant called Trattoria Demi. It was a small café alongside the rode. We walked in and there were maybe 20 seats in the whole place. The ceiling was lined with Christmas lights (my fav) and the waiter explained that everything was homemade when you ordered it. So I ordered a meatball sub with mozzarella cheese on it. It was awesome. After that we grabbed coffees at the corner shop on that same street and then we headed off.
We drove onwards past the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway and then through Concordia University. Grandpa and I are very into our family’s genealogy and we both knew that there was a statue that my great great grandfather Franz Englesman created in Humblot park so we drove there and photographed it. This was so awesome I am honoring it with a different blog post later.
After that we went to our hotel called the Palmer House. While walking it felt like I was checking into the 1920’s. The whole city has a nostalgic feel to it, which I love. Chicago is fascinating because there is just so much history to everything here. Well this hotel is off of State, which is in the heart of downtown. We couldn’t be staying at a better place. Well we unpacked and walked around for a bit. One of the places we stopped was a 12 story Macy’s.
After we walked around we went back to the Palmer House and I through on a sport coat and went with everyone to the all so famous “Berghoff’s Restaurant”. It’s a german restaurant that my family and Grandfather have been talking about since I can remember. That had all the right to talk about it because it was phenomenal. I had Sauerbraten which recipe was found in The Berghoff Family Cookbook. We finished the meal off with German chocolate cake and apple strudels.
After dinner Amy and I walked around State Street, which is one of the main streets downtown and I took some time-laspe photographs. I totally got some weird looks and got harassed by some uber-creepy homeless people but the photos turned out well so I was happy. Anyways thanks once again to all of you who are following my photographic adventures in Chicago this week.
{Photography. Witness. Passion} 