A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

When I woke up Thursday morning I was absolutely starving so Michelle and I walked to a nearby restaurant for a nice outdoor breakfast.  While sitting at our table I noticed a familiar face being seated at the table next to ours.  Being a sports fan I immediately knew that this guy was Michael Wilbon, a famous sports personality for ESPN and the Washington Post.

From Wikipedia,

In his career, Wilbon has covered 10 different Summer and Winter Olympic Games for The Washington Post, every Super Bowl since 1987, nearly every Final Four since 1982 and each year’s NBA Finals since 1987.

He also co-hosts the sports talk show Pardon the Interruption (PTI) on ESPN.  Since I watch PTI fairly regularly and am a huge NBA fan, I thought this was pretty cool.  But since he was having breakfast, I didn’t want to bother him so I just got Michelle to take a picture of me with him in the background.  Here’s a shot of me Twittering that “I was having breakfast at the table next to Michael Wilbon”.  For those of you who don’t know him, he’s the guy behind me and on the left.

I’m not sure how many people actually recognized him, but near the end of our breakfast one couple approached him and let him know that, “PTI was their favourite show on TV”.   I still wasn’t comfortable with interrupting his breakfast with his two friends.

After breakfast we caught a city bus to what we thought was the general vicinity of the Sears Tower.  As it turned out, we got off of the bus a little too early and had to walk for almost thirty minutes.  You’d think you’d be able to see the tallest building in the continent from anywhere in the city, but when you’re downtown amongst so many other huge buildings, it’s easy to lose.

We finally got to the 110 story behemoth, showed our GoChicago cards, and got in line for the elevator that would take us up to the observation tower.  This attraction is usually lined up for hours, but since we were in the middle of the week, we were lucky to only have to wait for about ten minutes.  After watching a short History Channel movie about the tower, we rode the elevator to our destination.

The view from the top was pretty sweet.  It reminded me a lot of being at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, but with Chicago being considerably larger, the sight was even more magnificent.  Michelle and I took some photos, and made our way around the observation deck before heading back down to ground level.

Since we had a pretty big breakfast, we decided to skip lunch and catch a bus to Navy Pier, a transformed family entertainment destination on Lake Michigan.  The first thing we did was inquire about the boat tours.  Our first choice was the Shoreline Architectural Tour of downtown via the Chicago River.  It was five minutes to three and luckily the next tour was at three.  Great!  We used our GoChicago cards to get our tickets and figured we’d just get on one of the boats directly behind the ticket station.  As it turned out we needed to make our way to the a different launch.  Once again we got into Amazing Race mode to catch the boat.

Needless to say, we made it in time and the tour was underway.  The one hour tour took us down the Chicago river through downtown while the guide explained many of the architectural wonders that line its shores.  Michelle and I both were incredibly impressed with the boat tour and would recommend anyone in the area to check it out.  It’s totally worth it.  The tour also revealed the origin of the city’s nickname “The Windy City”.  The name is not derived from the city’s apparent high velocity winds, but from of the “long winded” city officials who made their case to host the 1893 World’s Fair.

After the boat tour we walked along the entire pier, basking in the great views it offered.  There is a picturesque fifteen story ferris wheel on the pier which we figured we should ride.  Apparently this Ferris wheel replaced one that was built when Chicago hosted the 1893 World’s Fair.  Each car used to hold sixty people, had built in bar, and a live band.  How cool would that have been?

We were starting to get pretty hungry and tonight was our plan to have a nice dinner on the water.  None of the restaurants on the pier really fit into what we were looking for since they were all family oriented, so we caught a bus back into the heart of downtown.  Apparently during the boat tour, Michelle overheard a conversation about a restaurant called Fulton’s on he River that was supposed to be solid.  Surprisingly we were able to find it.

There was a thirty minute wait since we wanted to sit outside on the water so we were told to sit in the bar and they would come find us when the table was ready.  After inquiring with the hostess after nearly an hour had passed,  we found out that they thought we had left and gave our table away.  After that we were supposed to be next on the list.  Next we saw another party of two walk in and get seated after about two minutes.  Michelle approached the hostess.  It seems that this caught the attention of the head restaurant dude, so he swooped in and took control of the situation, seating us immediately and “taking care” of our drinks.

The rest of dinner was awesome.  The smallest steaks they had were 16oz.  As they say, “when in Rome”.  Something that I found pretty cool was after our waiter had explained  the items on the menu to us, he finished off with this statement – “And if you don’t like anything on the menu, the chef will make whatever you want”.  How awesome is that?  For the record I got the 16oz New York Strip and had no problem eating all of it.

After dinner we decided to go for a nightcap and dessert at the top of the John Hancock Building – Chicago’s third tallest building, known for it spectacular view of the city and America’s fastest elevator.  The view did live up to all of the hype, and looked extra impressive at night.  The funny thing is that the best view is from inside the lady’s washroom.  Michelle can vouch for that.  The men’s washroom had no windows.

You can see more photos from the day by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr