Enjoying the Second City

Chicago. Believe it or not with all the traveling Denise and I have done in our lives we had never made it here. Wow, what a great city! The weather was perfect and we walked all over. Here are a few pics from the top of the Hancock tower.

Chi-town and Lake Michigan from the Hancock building

Twisted view of the beach and city to the North

We visited Millenium park and took in the Art Institute. I thought that the collection of impressionist paintings were fantastic - on par with the Barnes museum in Phila and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. One of my favorites paintings of all time is the famous "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Seurat and we got to see it in person.

A highlight of the Art Institute

While at Millenium park we took a few pics by "The Bean" - a cool mirror sculpture. Note the Victory T-shirt - we sent the pics to the brewpub in hopes of getting them to send us some free stuff.

The Bean

The Hopdevil and The Bean

Look carefully at the center - that's us! 

We took in the Detroit-Chicago White Sox game and enjoyed the trouncing that the Tigers bestowed on the Sox (6-2). Fortunately there were lots of Tigers fans in the crowd so we had fun cheering our home town. 

Tigers win!! Too bad for Chicago fans.

Some of you might be wondering if we drove the 42 foot beast into the city - NO WAY. We left the motorhome at an RV park in Joliet IL (Hollywood Casino RV park), drove into Chicago and stayed at the Palomar hotel. 

We had a wonderful dinner at the Sable restaurant adjacent to the hotel and stopped in the bar afterward to sample a scotch. I looked behind the bar to see what they had on offer and saw 2 huge shelves stacked 4 bottles deep with single malts!! They offered no less than 320 different bottles of scotch. The bartender was very knowledgeable and was impressed when I told him that my favorite was Highland Park 18 (also one of his favorites). He offered me a Tobermory 15 which was fantastic. We got to talking and he pulled some unique bottles off the shelf for me to try. One was Bruichladdich Black Art: 

 Black Art - fantastic, lots of flavor and complexity, not too peaty, 

After I enjoyed that one he brought out a tiny taste of Bunnahabhain 40 year old - the most expensive dram they had on the bar at $450 per ounce. Thankfully he comped me on this because I hated it. It tasted like sucking on a burnt piece of oak. The bartender told us about the guys who came in accompanied by 2 "escorts", asked for the best scotch, ordered 2 shots for $900 and downed them in one gulp. I can only imagine what they paid for the escorts. 

If you want to buy a bottle you can get one here for only 1,975 UK Pounds (plus shipping).
Bunnahabhain 40

$450 per ounce - not good but at least it was free

That was our 3 days in Chi-town. We had a blast but we're exhausted and ready for some peace and quiet. On to the lake country of Minnesota...