Blogs from Chicago, Illinois, United States, North America - page 6

Wednesday – Friday, 7-9 March We did a farewell tour of Kirkwood on Wednesday and did The Wall one more time for good measure. I really like that run. Thursday was the farewell tour of Heavenly and a balmy 4C on the mountain so we finished the way we arrived – in warm weather. We finished early and ran around returning our skis and snow chains, as well as getting a couple of things fixed. We even got half back on our used skis so the whole thing only cost us A$150 for a month for both of us. Buying used was definitely the way to go. We left early on Friday morning so we had time to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was a complete white out! Ocean fog had ... read more

On the morning after the wedding, Sammi's parents hosted breakfast at the hotel. Besides recalling immediate highlights of last night's memorable event, it gave us another chance to see family before they began dispersing. We saw Don's great-nephew Ari as he approaches his third birthday this summer. We only previously saw him shortly after he was born at the previous Nadel family fete. His maternal grandfather Elliot Francke gave us the book he wrote and published "Upon a Time: The Darkness behind the Tales". This unusual medieval mystery is an interesting story and we await the sequel. Ari's parents Russ and Tara and his aunt Fran had to leave soon after breakfast. We knew that as teachers Russ and Fran had to get home before Monday classes. However some bad news made their departure even more ... read more

Today was a relatively lazy day. After a late breakfast we visited with a few of the family. With the arrival of Lee, all four brothers were together for the first time in years. We wandered out with Caroline but did not stray too far from the hotel in the cold wind. We found a vegetarian sandwich bar which the three of us enjoyed. It got dark relatively early. That is not unusual for winter time in Chicago! For kabbalat shabbat we debated going to shul or staying in our hotel room. We had found the local synagogue when walking around town, and it was not very far away. So despite the cold and possibly wet evening, we decided to join the community for bringing in shabbat We were glad we went to the Chicago Loop ... read more

No interesting pictures or stories tonight. Quick entry to say Hello. We are in Chicago. We were here before 1pm. Not much to say. We left our house around 4:30am and thanks to the thick fog, the road construction between Houston and Rolla, and the backed-up traffic in St Louis, we arrived at the airport exactly on time. We flew United Airlines ~ St Louis to Chicago ~ our paperwork said 1 hour 28 minutes and neither of us thought that was correct. We have made that flight multiple times prior at 45 minutes. Kamie timed our flight from takeoff to landing and it was 43 minutes. We sat in a holding area with multiple other United planes waiting for another plane to leave before we could taxi to our gate… so that was another 25 ... read more

The drive from Buffalo was a long and pretty boring one. You don't see many international tourists when you stop on the highway service areas here. This is one serious drive, starting with Upper New York State, than the North-West of Pennsylvania followed by crossing Ohio and Indiana to finally end in Illinois. We also drive actually pretty close to Michigan. The road follow for a while Lake Erie, but we actually never saw it! If you want to park in downtown Chicago, be ready to pay up to 65usd per night...just to park your car! Hotels in Chicago are actually relatively cheap if you compare the rates to New York, but that parking fee would kill it. So we are simply staying next to O'hare airport....and are not charged for letting our little Mustang sleep ... read more