Chicago

We walked south on Michigan Ave and the crush of people always shocks me when I come into a big city again.  It’s like those movies and pictures that you see of New York City where everyone is walking 10 abreast and you think, “It can’t really be that crowded.  They did that to make it look hard for Dustin Hoffman to walk…”  But there really are that many people trying to walk at the same time.  And crossing streets when two hoards of people surge across at the same time and crash into each other in the middle of the street.  It can overwhelm some 

people from small towns I would imagine and it has to be taken with a grain of salt or you can get mad really easy from people bumping into you.  But the first thing that we see as we come on to Michigan is an artwork up a column that I said, “Look at that Agam like thing on the building.”  And we walk to it and see that it is an Agam.  Bully for me, but I still haven’t hung the Agam that I have in sitting in my house right now…

We decided on the printer’s row walk first to hit some bookstores and libraries before they closed, but walked into the public library as they were shutting down and made it into Sandemeyer’s bookstore http://www.sandmeyersbookstore.com/ after they were closed.  I say made it in, because the woman let us enter because there were still other customers in the store and she wasn’t done with her paperwork.  Lucky for us because we were able to get a few very nice books on sale and dinner directions from the lady working there.  We set out to see the Dearborn Station (but the clock was covered with scaffolding) and ran into Loopy Yarns which was great for me.  I know I have too much yarn as it is, but http://www.loopyyarns.com/

there were a couple things there that couldn’t be missed including their classroom that had “yarns on tap” and a wall hanging that I want to duplicate for the house.  Dinner at Hackney’s and wasn’t that a great find.  http://www.hackneysprintersrow.net/  I had a gruyere and ham pannini with apple slices on there that was something else.  You can see how much John liked his Hackney burger with pulled pork on it in the picture.  I don’t know how everyone else measures a good meal, but I always know that it’s good when I spend a lot of the meal trying to figure out if I can make it at home…