Chicago Part I

I have already gone out of order on my Chicago posts, but that is due to the fact that I wanted to post about the taping of the Oprah showed BEFORE it aired today. I just watched it and re-lived those awesome memories again!! It is cooler to see it all put together in show format. There are many breaks in the show while they shift things around and such.
Our train arrived a teeny bit early into Chicago. We had luggage so we headed straight for the hotel. We planned to put it in luggage hold, but they allowed us to check in at like 10:45 AM. This was awesome because check-in isn't supposed to be until 3 pm. Needless to say, the hotel was a madhouse. We dropped off our things and headed out to Michigan Avenue. We took a water taxi over to Navy Pier. It was a GORGEOUS day!!

Navy Pier was BUSY! We were all very thirsty so we stopped for a bite to eat. We headed down to the end of the pier to see the Chicago lighthouse. Upon seeing the waters of Lake Michigan, Aliyah could only think of going to the beach. She did not want to ride the Ferris wheel, visit the museum or anything--only the beach would do. We found out that there is a free trolley (anything free in Chicago is pretty awesome) that stops right at our hotel--who knew? We boarded the trolley and stopped back off at our hotel to change into swimsuits. We got back on the trolley a few minutes later to go to the Ohio Street beach. It was GORGEOUS! We were privileged to experience Chicago's hottest days of the entire summer--a big plus for us!

I didn't take my camera to the beach since I didn't want it to get wet, and I didn't feel comfortable leaving it with all of my stuff while we enjoyed the water. Aliyah was very brave about swimming in the open water. The awesome things about Lake Michigan...no sharks, stingrays, crabs, or rip-tides. The water is clear and doesn't smell. We spent several hours there working on our tans. Finally, we headed back to the trolley and back to our hotel. After we got ready, we headed out to the River North area for some dinner. We went to P.F. Changs. Josh and I thoroughly enjoyed the food, although the eating experience wasn't great due to Keirah being out of typical routine.
Here is Aliyah chatting it up on the cell before dinner arrived. My mouth is watering thinking about P.F. Changs! From dinner, we walked around the city a bit to enjoy the lights, sights, & sounds. We stopped to take a few pics on Michigan Avenue and to go into Walgreens to get a few snacks for the hotel.
This is the Chicago Tribune building at night. Notice the beautiful architectural details--I love that!! Since the girls were getting tired, we finished our walk at our hotel.
This is the view from our hotel. The Chicago River is quite obvious. You will also see NBC tower on the right and the John Hancock building is the tall one in the middle. It was a SPECTACULAR view at night. Lying in bed and looking out at this was pretty cool!

Here's what happened once we got back to our room...
More Chicago adventures to come...and believe me, the trip got even more exciting!