After a delicious breakfast, we headed back to the apartment. Our friends actually returned from their trip that morning and we were able to see them for a half hour before we had to head to the airport ourselves.
When I first booked our flights to Lisbon, we had a two hour layover in Chicago on the way back. A few months later, I received an update from Orbitz that the final leg of our flight from Chicago had been canceled. We were given two options: Fly home the next day or cancel the entire trip. I had a very aggravating hour-long phone call with Orbitz, much of which was spent on hold while they tried to contact Aer Lingus through whom the "package" of flights had been booked. Aer Lingus refused to let us book another flight with another airline that day. Since we were only a month and a half away from the trip, we decided just to keep the flights and have a "day" in Chicago.
We booked a night at a new boutique hotel, Staypineapple, located in an historic former bank building located on the Loop. It turned out to be a great hotel, and I really liked that the kept the charming details of the former bank.
We arrived in Chicago at 6:30pm and were dead tired, but also very hungry by the time we reached the hotel. Too tired to go anywhere, we opted to eat at the restaurant on the ground floor, the Atwood. I had the delicious Atwood Melt with pork rillette, house applebutter, cheddar cheese, and chives. And then we went back to the room and crashed.
The next day we only had until around 11:00AM before we had to set off for the airport. So we got up early and headed out for breakfast. A few years ago I visited Chicago for a conference and discovered the fast-healthy chain restaurant Freshii that I really enjoyed. There was one a few blocks away from the hotel so we went there for egg tortilla wraps. Yum!
With full stomachs, we headed toward Millennium Park. When I was in Chicago three years prior, I was so busy with the conference that I didn't have much time to explore and so I had never seen the Cloud Gate sculpture, often called the Millennium Bean. Since few touristy places were open yet, it seemed like the perfect thing to do with our short time in Chicago. When the change in our flights was first made, I was terrified of having a layover in Chicago in January. What would the weather be like? Would we need to pack a much warmer outfit than we were going to need in Lisbon? In the end, we were incredibly lucky. It was the perfect weather- 32° F and a dusting of few-day-old snow around the corners, but no active snow or rain. It was lovely!
We warmed up with coffee at Pret a Manger and then caught the L to the airport. We made it out of Chicago without any weather delays and happily headed home.
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