I made it!!
Late Monday night I arrived at my destination and got my room key. Upon first entering my room, it looked fine.
It wasn’t until I was enjoying my dinner…yes a banana, that I realized I was in a room right next to a huge humming unit outside my window. I debated for about 3 minutes before I said screw it and called down to the front desk.
Room number 2. Much quieter. I showered and went straight to bed.
Bright and early (too early) on Tuesday I woke up and got ready for my training class. It was not too bad and actually got out around 2:30pm. The other trainer with me, we’ll call her Lena, and I decided it sounded like a good idea to go into Chicago to explore and have a yummy meal.
We decided to take the train in and almost missed our exit, but got off just in time. Once we were off though, things started to go ALL WRONG. After consulting a map we determined our destination was 1 mile away and promptly turned right (instead of left-who knew maps were so hard to read) and ended up walking away from our destination.
About 1 mile into our walk, we were randomly making fun saying wouldn’t it totally suck if we went the wrong direction. A nice local woman overheard us and advised us that yes, we had indeed gone the wrong direction.
A quick check of Lena’s phone confirmed we now had 2 miles to reach our destination. We looked at each other and chuckled and turned around to walk the 2 miles back to our starting point and then to our destination.
We finally made it to Michigan Ave and just in time because we were HANGRY! We walked around aimlessly for a few minutes and then decided on tapas at Mercat a la Planxa.
The restaurant was really cute and had delicious food. We decided to order a bunch of things and share. This ended up being the perfect way to taste a bunch of items.
I started off with a white sangria steeped with pears, grapes and sage. SO GOOD!!! Jeff please make this for me!!
Next was their complimentary bread.
We ordered the Croquetas, so good. They tasted like fried pieces of mashed potato with bacon.
We decided to order the special, a seafood stew with dipping bread to soak up the broth. This was probably my favorite and I could have eaten the whole thing if Lena took longer in the bathroom.
Next up was the pork belly in apple cider with parsnip puree and an apple slaw. We first tasted everything separate and then all 3 at once. We agreed you should eat everything in one bite, the sour, salty and sweet flavors balanced everything out nicely.
Last up was the shortribs on flatbread with bacon, horse radish and cheese. This was good, but not as good as the pork belly. My mouth was a little sad ending on this taste.
We exited the restaurant with some indecision if we should catch the train home or continue exploring. We checked the bus scheduled and saw that the next train was 30 mins away and we had a mile to walk. The sudden rain made it easy for us and we decided to head back to the train to go home.
We made it back to the Metra station with only 9 minutes to buy tickets and find our train. There was a long line in front of us that caused us some worry but went by quick enough and we made it on the train with 4 minutes to spare.
We were joking that we made the trek all the way down the city to walk around lost for {literally} 5 miles, thinking that was going to be the worse of our evening. Little did we know…
Apparently it’s a good idea to start moving towards the train doors once they announce your stop will be the next one. We waited until the train stopped and had to go through 2 sets of doors. Right as we made it to the exit doors, an announcement was made that advised the doors were closing. Except the doors we were looking at were already closed. We messed with those doors for 2 seconds before Lena realized the doors on the other side (yes, right behind us) were the ones open and rapidly closing.
In a last ditch attempt to keep the doors open, Lena jammed her hand and leg in between train doors. It didn’t work, the doors stayed shut. By now we started to panic since our car was parked at this station and we had no means of getting home any other way. I randomly hit an OPEN button that didn’t work and Lena stayed frozen where she was. It wasn’t until I realized we were moving that Lena pulled her hand and leg back in and we cracked up laughing.
Fortunately the next exit was in a strip mall that had people milling all around. The sad part was that we were closer to our hotel than our car, but somehow had to get the car since we obviously needed it the next day. We ended up taking an $8 taxi to the car to get in the car and drive back to our hotel. It was a long night but I guess we now have a “story” to tell everyone when we get back.
PS The restaurant we went to was Iron Chef Jose Garces’ restaurant.
