Christmas in November

So, apparently here in Chicago, Christmas comes before Thanksgiving.

On Friday 11/17, there was a tree lighting ceremony in Millennium Park. I went downtown with Anne and her Serbian friend (can't remember her name now) an hour before it was supposed to be lit. We had raced out of the house to catch the bus so I didn't grab my umbrella and neither of them had brought one so, after finding where the tree was, we walked to Macy's to get out of the rain. This particular Macy's is in the building of the first department store in America, Marshall Field's (This was someone and something I had read about before coming to Chicago though I don't remember too many of the details.). We went up the eight floors, each cheerfully decorated and then back down as it was getting closer to tree lighting time.

Not surprising, the park had gotten much more crowded but we still managed to get up close to the tree. The rain, which dumped on us as we left the Macy's had eased to almost nothing. We counted down from ten and then, Happy New Year! I mean, the lights went on. We cheered and sang Christmas songs and then the rain started again, hard. The Serbian girl was being picked up by her father (she's not affiliated with the university, Anne met her at a dinner some folks had taken her to, she is actually here meeting her father for the first time and leaves in a week). Anne and I ran to the bus stop but with delay after delay we figured this bus was not coming so we ran to the metra train and sat down with one minute to spare before it closed its doors and took off.

Check out my ear muffs!

Saturday 11/18 we went back downtown for the Disney parade and fireworks. This time Maggie could join us (she had work the night before) and Anne came to our apartment since we are right next to the bus stop. We got downtown right as the parade was scheduled to start (5:30PM) and it was PACKED. Anne said someone told her up to a million people come out for it. We couldn't see a thing, so we tried to go to the next street over but Chicago has all of these weird streets and suddenly you'll be underground or going over a bridge, we got terribly turned around and the police had blocked off the stairwells leading back up to the street. Eventually we made our way back up and onto the street. At first, I was disappointed because, there were so many people you still couldn't see anything, but as the parade continued and people with whiny kids left, I slowly but surely made my way to the front. Anne is tall so she was fine a little behind me and Maggie said she could see over me as well. Now that we could see, we enjoyed lots of floats with iconic Chicago places like the Lincoln Park Zoo or Garrett's popcorn shop. For being a Disney parade I didn't see to many Disney themed floats, but maybe we missed them at the beginning? We did see Santa, and the crowd went wild! Made me think of the movie Elf, "Santa! Santa! I know him!"

There were about 10 minutes between the end of the parade and the fireworks and where we had originally been was the best place to see them, but we didn't make it down there in time because we were meeting up with the Serbian girl and her cousin. We saw the fireworks reflected in the buildings and sometimes it would peek out past another building.

Maggie and I got separated from Anne and her friends during this. They told us to meet them at a place called Eataly (that's right, eat + Italy). We met up with them there and got hot chocolate and a cannoli, yum! Apparently this place is a top 10 of places to eat at in Chicago. It was huge and swarming with people (we had to wait quite a while for that hot chocolate to heat up). A combo grocery store, restaurant but food court style with a fancy restaurant, pizzeria, casual dining, etc. upstairs and Nutella station, coffee bar, gelato, etc. downstairs. Mixed in were shelves with fancy olive oil, cook books and they boasted carrying hundreds (maybe it was thousands??) of bottles of wine.

After an hour or so there, Maggie and I decided to go home. Chicago was quick to get the street back in service, you could hardly tell a parade had even gone through.