What crazy mama drives her kids to Chicago for a long (Veteran's Day) holiday weekend of museums and foodie experiences?!! Um... this one!
Another Mama and Sons city adventure in the books, this time to Chicago...
a first time visit to this city for the boys!
I knew if we wanted to check out this windy city it would have to be before Old Man Winter hit, so off we went on 7 hour road trip through the states of 1) Pennsylvania 2) Ohio 3) Indiana, into 4) Illinois... crossing through 4 states! wow! We left right after school/ work on a Thursday, drove a good 3.5 hours into Toledo, Ohio and stayed overnight at a hotel. (Daddy had too much work he couldn't put off or neglect, so off we went to have fun on our 3-day weekend for him.) The next morning, after breakfast, we hit the road and were relieved to find out we were gaining an hour (since we drove so far west), which really gave us a head start on our city sightseeing! We arrived into the city with just a light beautiful white dusting of snow (first snow of the season for Chicago), with Taji humorously stating "Snow fair!" from the backseat! Our amazingly fabulous hotel allowed us to check-in before noon, and then we meandered through the streets and checked out the infamous "bean," which the boys couldn't get enough of and for some reason were compelled to do ninja kicks around it.
First stop, the breathtakingly huge aquarium
Mama surprised the boys with a themed mystery restaurant for dinner. It was a SPY restaurant, perfect for little spies in the making... so we dressed the part, and took an uber to a secret undisclosed location, where upon entering an unmarked door we had to perform martial arts tricks to be allowed to enter. Little did we know while we were "performing our moves" we were filmed, and the footage was on display for the whole restaurant to watch! Too funny!
entering....
Lots of cool James Bond -like spy gadgets to check out and play around with while waiting for our food and eating
Such a memorable dining experience! I love how every city we visit, we are able to have these truly extraordinary and unique themed dining experiences! In NYC, we took the boys to a NINJA themed restaurant that they still talk about to this day, and on this trip to Chicago we found a SPY restaurant that the boys can add to their list of cool foodie experiences! I wonder what kind of restaurants we'll find when we visit other cities.... so much fun!
On our second day in Chicago, we had a lovely breakfast at a French cafe and then we headed to the country's most recommended museum of natural history and sciences: the Field Museum
This is where the boys witnessed a neat Jurassic World exhibit, with animatronic dinosaurs that soared and moved above us. This experience along with the Jurassic World movie marathon we caught on TV when returning to our hotel room was what triggered Taj's love for Jurassic World and obsession with the movie and Jurassic World themed legos!
Oh Nutella Heaven! Chicago has a Nutella Cafe that we could not resist... and Jax devoured the crepes and other goodies we ordered. Taji and I could barely get a bite in!
A little visit with Chicago friends on our last morning.... we are so lucky to have friends to visit (and new friends to meet) wherever we go!
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