Jenny on the Blog: Chicago

I had a fabulous 4-day weekend in Chicago. It was my first trip to the big city! My friend Sue and I had a great time walking and taking the transit all over the city. The first day was spent shopping in Magnificent Mile (close to our hotel) and we quickly realized it wasn't our "scene". We simply could not afford the Beverley Hills-type stores and decided that the next few days would be spent outside the downtown area. We were also in search of good live music and realized that staying downtown just wasn't cutting it especially when we ended up on the first night at a cougar bar with a one-man jazz band! After spending some time with our concierge and asking sales people in stores, we ventured out to neighborhoods like Lincoln Park and Wicker Park and found great little restaurants, cool shops and jazz & blues bars. We also took some fabulous architectural tours and learned a lot about the history of Chicago...did you know that 130 yrs ago, the city was just a swamp land with 50 people?! One of the coolest office buildings we saw had a metal spiral staircase inside the building going up to seven floors. We also wondered into the cultural centre with one of the world's largest tiffany glass dome recently restored - this is a must-see! The highlight of the trip was definitely seeing the hockey game (thanks to cousin James in Sanfran for setting me up with tix!)...it appeared that I was a travelling Canucks fan :)