Great googly moogly what a weekend. Let’s start with the easy part: On Sunday, we didn’t do much of anything. Yep, we just sat around the house, watched some TV and relaxed. Why? Well, therein lies the tale…

takaza had scored a package for the Chicago Air and Water Show, so we knew that we were in for a fun and exciting weekend. On Friday, I left work at 3:30 PM and met up with Dan (who hadn’t been feeling well earlier in the day and had called in) and we proceeded to take the train into downtown Chicago. We weren’t in a huge hurry, so we decided to take a water taxi up the Chicago river to Michigan Avenue. It was a delightful 15 minute ride that offers some really nifty views of the city. We both really enjoyed it, even though Dan was feeling a wee bit seasick by the end of the trip. We had to walk a little south to catch our bus, and our path took us right past Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe…well, we had to stop in of course! Dan’s peanut butter milkshake was divine, and my espresso-mixed-with-two-scoops-of-chocolate-ice-cream was amazing.

We caught the #3 bus southbound which took us down to the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. After we checked in and dropped off our stuff (14th floor – great view looking north across downtown!), we went down to join the reception that was part of the package. It was a nice spread, and we both found enough to eat that we didn’t really feel the need to venture out for dinner later. We had an amusing moment when we realized that gosh, there seemed to be a larger number of people than would be expected. Then we realized the reception was also sponsored by the City of Chicago, and that the hotel was the headquarters for all of the flying teams for the Air and Water Show (which explained the groups of military-looking guys in matching polo shirts!).

After the reception we walked around the hotel a little bit, thinking about it from a convention point of view. Not a bad hotel: 33 floors, with separate elevators for floors 1-20 and 21-33. The rooms are large and comfortable, as one might expect. Not a lot of function space in the hotel (a single medium-sized ballroom plus hospitality suites) but that makes sense since most of the events take place at McCormick Place. We walked into the Grand Concourse and started laughing ourselves silly at the thought of hosting a convention there. A bit of perspective: We were in the North Building, which is four stories tall and has 700,000 square feet of function space. In addition, there is also the South Building, the West Building, and Lakeside Center; all of the buildings combined come to 2,700,000 square feet of function space. In comparison, Hall C of the Pittsburgh Convention Center is 45,100 square feet, and if you combined Hall C and the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom, that’s 76,000 square feet. Midwest FurFest uses a total of about 30,000 – 40,000 square feet of function space.

Yeah. I don’t see us moving to McCormick Place anytime soon.

After wandering around a bit, we retired back to the hotel room, where we watched a couple of episodes of Entourage (which is actually quite a funny show) and the first few minutes of Flight of the Conchords (which is not), then went to sleep.

Saturday morning was gray and relatively chilly – mid 60’s F. Fortunately, though it was overcast it was a high ceiling, so it was good weather for the Air and Water Show. We had a delicious breakfast buffet at the hotel (they brought my coffee in a French press – how could I not love this place?), then caught a shuttle up to North Avenue Beach. We had passes to the sponsors’ tents, which was pretty spiffy – food and drink provided, seats on the beach near the announcer for the show, the works. We stuck around for a few hours, but after the fourth or fifth set of planes passing overhead, Dan was getting a headache and I was, unfortunately, a bit bored. We wandered around downtown (and oops – accidentally went back into Moonstruck Chocolates, where we picked up some very appropriate chocolates), then caught a bus back to Union Station, where we caught a train out to Naperville.

The train trip was uneventful, but man, it seems like the BNSF line has dozens of teeny-tiny stops. We were met in Naperville by roho and genet, and soon after found that our numbers had swelled from five for dinner to ten (then back down to eight). We did a bit of shopping at Sur La Table, then walked over to our reason for being in Naperville: Heaven on Seven. We had a round of drinks while waiting for the rest of our group (and Genet discovered a new favorite liqueur), and were eventually joined by linnaeus, datahawk, emrldgrrl, and foxish. Then we sat down for dinner and the fun began.

See, Heaven on Seven offers two prix fixe menus: “Feed Me Jimmy” and “Feed Me Jimmy Junior”. I have only ever had the “Junior” and it was amazing – four courses, chef’s choice, followed by dessert. Linnaeus, DataHawk, Devin, and I all went for the “Feed Me Jimmy”, which is seven courses, plus dessert. I blame Devin for talking us into it. Roho, wisely, went for the “Junior”. Dan, Genet, and Jazz, wisest of all, ordered from the menu. As best I can recall, my dinner included:
* Turtle soup with a splash of sherry paired with chicken and andouille sausage gumbo, both served in demitasses
* Jalapeno cornbread muffin
* Crawfish cake (like a crab cake but with crawfish) served with a homemade tomato-horseradish-cream rémoulade sauce
* A single bay scallop served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes (OMG – I don’t generally like scallops but this one was sweet and succulent – delicious!)
* Two Jamaican jerk chicken wings served with tasty mango sauce
* Beef tips served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes and garnished with a crispy fried onion ring (added after Roho reminded me!)
* A tilapia filet served over another crawfish cake, with the same rémoulade sauce
* Mini BBQ sandwiches, each maybe 1.5″ in diameter, one with pulled pork and one with beef brisket (amazing!)
* and for dessert, I opted for the chicory coffee crème brulee, which was very tasty.

I think by the fifth course we all decided we were going to die, but at least we’d die happy. Obviously it was an extended meal, and we didn’t get out of there until about 9:30, three hours after we had arrived. It was an amazing experience, though, and a surprisingly good value as well. Next time, though? I’ll stick with the “Junior”. We all went back to Ohana House to chat and relax for a while, and it was the perfect way to end the evening. The ride home was quiet (thanks again for driving, Genet!) as Roho, Dan, and I nodded off into food-induced torpor. We got home at about 12:30 AM, and went to bed at 1 AM.

So now you understand why we didn’t do much on Sunday, eh? 🙂 As for the rest of the week, we have a gaming night coming up on Thursday, and cleaning to be done in preparation for that. Ah, domesticity!