Trip to Chicago

Before I forget, let me share some pictures of a trip we took to Chicago about a month ago. It was the weekend before Valentine's Day and after my last interview, at UIUC. Jessica flew out and we spent a little more than 48 hours in the Windy City.

It was pretty cold. We can truly say we were freezing as the temp hovered around 32 degrees. We both sported warmness gear, like gloves and jackets. We began our jounrey having no guide to Chicago other than my fuzzy memory of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and a hankering to try the local pizza. The pizza was extreme--a lot more cheese than we expected and that pastry style crust, my goodness! It wiped us out. We thought we could handle two pieces but one piece of that stuff was quite enough.

In the spirit of Ferris, we headed off to the Art Institute of Chicago, where we saw American Gothic and other paintings:

This next picture is for Fran, who once noted the resemblence between Jessica and a stick person:

After the art institute, we nearly froze our extremeties off while walking to the Sears Tower. Jessica wasn't so sure about going up to the 103rd floor, but I think she liked it okay.
After dinner we walked around a park area where there was an outdoor ice rink. It was too cold to get out on the ice, but it looked fun.

We also came across two huge srceens made of glass bricks where slowly blinking human faces would appear against the night sky.

The next day we had some excellent crepes for brunch, went to the natural history museum to learn about the ancient volcano stricken city of Pompeii, and then headed home.