Trip to Chicago

This past weekend, my parents, Sheena and I headed up to Chi-town to visit my brother Blesson and sister-in-law Jolly.  My folks haven’t gone up to see them since they’ve been there, so they were pretty excited to make the trip.  Overall, it was a great weekend.  Chicago is such an awesome city, its hard not to have a great time out there.  Since the folks were with us, they really wanted to check out the city and do the touristy stuff.  We got in early on Friday morning and really just got settled in and walked around the city…  Sheena takes every opportunity to do a photo shoot, so she snapped a few shots around town, namely at the Bean and some of the many parks that are found in the city.   One of the highlights of Friday was checking out the Sears Tower (Willis Tower).  It’s 103 stories tall and they have a SkyDeck that you can basically step out on to glass and see the city below you… Kinda scary, but the kicker was that my folks were soo scared of it that they didn’t even want us to get on it!  Of course the four of us (Bless, Jolly, Sheena and I) got on.  Then my Dad got brave and put one foot in… but that was as far as he could go!  Mom stayed a very save distance away from any of the outer walls.

Saturday we did some more walking around, but the highlight was doing the Sea Dog Architecture Tour on the river, starting from the Navy Pier.  Call me a dork, but it was awesome to cruise the river and have someone talk about all of the great buildings and the stories behind it all.  We enjoyed it a lot.  After that, we hit up the Lincoln Park Zoo.  Not only is it a great Zoo, but its free!  The Lincoln Park Zoo was designed in such a way that you’re so close to all of the animals… I thought that was pretty neat.   We then found this underground pizza joint called Bricks.  Literally, it’s underground.  There wasn’t any proper signage, but somehow we found the spot.  It had rave reviews when I looked it up, and after eating there, it was confirmed.  Really great pizza!    After all of that, we just roamed the city a bit more.  Later that night, Sheena and I were able to meet up with my good friends Pratik and Silky at Quartino’s.  We ate soo much throughout the day, but Tik and Silky convinced me to get the beingets with ice cream.  Lets just say, it was worth the extra calories….  I would highly recommend that spot!

Sunday, we went to Blesson and Jolly’s church, Chicago Tabernacle.  I walked in with no expectations, but they blew my socks off.  If you’re ever in Chicago, this is a church you gotta check out.  The choir rocked, the pastor’s message was on point and entertaining… even the building looked cool.  It was very family based and loving.  It’s not a huge church, but I kinda like that about it.  After church we hit up Devon Street, which is basically Little India.  It felt like we were transported to Bombay!  We had some good ole Indian food at Tiffin Restaurant and roamed the area a bit.   Then we headed back to Blesson and Jolly’s place which is in Hyde Park.  Their apartment is right outside of the University of Chicago and of course, we had to walk around and snap some shots.  Manju and Cindy were in town that same weekend as well, so they joined in on the fun

Overall, it was a really fun weekend.  It’s always great spending time with family and it was an added bonus to be able to do it in an awesome city like Chicago….