The Long and Winding Road

Alas, again I'm on the road. You know it's bad when with each location update I post on Facebook, I get comments of "Again?" and "Are you ever home?". This week I'm in Chicago for work. I've never been to Chicago. Tonight is night #2 of 5. So far I love it and I'm just super impressed with how the trip has run so far. Minus the scary driving. I wish I didn't have a car here, but since I'm doing client visits all over Chicago-land, I must drive my trusty rented red Jetta.

So here I am tonight- in my apple green Juicy Couture pants, my Tory Burch sandals that are not nearly casual enough for the pants, and a pale blue tshirt that says "Dick Brewers Surf Boards- Hawaii" that I distinctly remember purchasing at Marshall's in 7th grade. It is my favorite, softest tshirt. My point is, I'm quite the site...sitting here in the lobby of the Millenium Knickerbocker (boo no wifi in the rooms), drinking my split of Chandon on an old couch. Side note- I'm a champagne snob. Not for it's pretentious or elitist reputation, but because it's good, doesn't give me a headache, and averages around 60 calories a glass.

Traveling alone is interesting and I'm really finding myself interested to see how I do in this scenario. Having been in a relationship and living with someone for 11 years now (not the same someones, but I was never single for long), I haven't done this before. Been in a big city all alone. Left to travel alone, sightsee alone, shop alone, eat alone...I am intrigued with the choices I'm making. Like last night for dinner, I ate at a Thai restaurant. I NEVER eat Thai food. I can't say I've been to a Thai restaurant since high school. But I did last night because I could. Another example- Today I took a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright house here in Oak Park. That would never have happened on a girls trip...and the hubby says he would have been interested to go if he was here, but I wonder how true that would be if we were cramming everything into a weekend. I find myself going outside the realm of "normal" for me, which is exciting. This is an interesting experiment.

I also find myself craving companionship, even though I'm having at least 3 client meetings a day. My hotel is next to Bloomingdale's on Michigan Avenue and I stopped in to the Benefit Brow Bar to get a much neglected touchup. I really liked the girl and she and I gabbed for an hour and played with makeup and she made me up. Fun! She suggested I come back tomorrow to play with another look and I'm actually considering it. I wonder though, is it because I am a makeup dunce and someone showing me how to update my look excites me? Or do I want to go hang with my new makeup buddy again for another hour so I don't have to spend it alone?

Tonight I did the Hancock Observatory, tomorrow night is the Museum of Contemporary Art (free on Tuesdays!), and Wednesday night is a bike tour around the city that ends with the fireworks at Navy Pier. I'll try to update again on how the Lonely Girl trip is going.

Signing off from the bar...

On the Road Again!

I feel like life hasn't stopped for 6 weeks. Pretty much because it hasn't.

I returned from my Euro trip 2 weeks ago. It seems so long ago now...which is sad. That's how quickly life can pass you by.

Had a terrific time though with my college roomie. Logged alot of girl time between 10 days and 3 countries.

Our favorite place we went- out of Switzerland, Munich, Prague, and Berlin, was Munich. We had the BEST TIME THERE. In the absolute worst weather too. I highly recommend the Mike's Bike Tour there. It's a tour where you stop at all the historical sites, with intermittent stops in these huge beer gardens there. One held up to 10,000 people. All sitting in this garden, 4 times the size of Central Park, drinking liters of beer. Not just pints, liters. We also did a bar crawl, the Insomniac Bar Crawl, that was pretty great too. Everyone there was very friendly, and just the whole vibe was very...jolly. That's the best word I can think of. Like a good time, good people, good nature, and good beer. Even the oompa bands with the band players in lederhosen...everything about Munich made us smile.

Prague was gorgeous. The architecture was just absolutely ridiculous, and the history was very very interesting. 20 years ago, they were still stuck in the Communist world. But I think that other previous travelers had built it up too much. One friend told me "Prague is life changing." I wouldn't go that far. It was the one place we actually did the hostel thing...but it was named Top 10 in the world by various publications, so you probably couldn't count it as a hostel. It was not located in the most convenient location, but it was super cool. It's called the Czech Inn. I encourage anyone to stay there in Prague if they want to stay in a really really cool hostel and feel like they may be too old for the typical hostel crowd. Cool bar inside too...

Berlin was a fave stop too. We were very glad we went to Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp outside of Berlin, the first day we were there. We were pretty melancholy afterwards. Interestingly, on the way to the concentration camp is when we found out Michael Jackson died. We couldn't read the newspapers, but could see something major happened to him, so I had to call my husband back home in the States for an update. So crazy. That night, every bar we went to in Berlin played MJ. Another highlight of Berlin was a crazy night out...we were trying to find this wine bar that you apparently taste a bunch of wines, and then pay what you think you should owe. We didn't find it, but we did find this little wine cellar of maybe 6 tables with a sweet older German couple who spoke very very little English running it. We somehow managed to order 2 glasses of really good wine and the best beef stew I've had in my life. But the touching thing was when we left- we were leaving the restaurant and the wife came running after us. She grabbed my friends arm and managed to stammer out "Good...Luck...to you...and...OBAMA!". Now I'm by no means a Democrat, but it was so sweet for some reason. I loved her :) . And then we made our way to Dr. Pong, a ping pong bar- not beer pong, ping pong- and then on to an absynthe bar called Druide. That's a whole other post for another time.

Same for Switzerland. I can't start now into the canyoning adventure, ie 4 hours of terror and death defying heights, but I promise I will get to it very soon. PROMISE!

Cheers!