memorial day weekend

And we spent two more glorious days in New York but it has been too long since then to write about that trip and so am going to tell you about our okie-dokie Memorial day weekend.

The initial plan was to drive to Niagara falls along with another couple- it is around 16 hours drive from here and I didn't find the idea too practical -so- convinced hubby to drop the plan. He did so half-heartedly and we instead took a route well known to us- we drove to Chica-gooooo! This change of plan happened at around 6 pm on Friday evening (crazy us!) and then we did our hotel reservations, packed our stuff hurriedly and started the journey.
The thing about staying in EP is that...it is all so beautiful, serene, blah and more blah but when it comes to travel, we have to add a good 30 minutes to the trip. This is not so bad when we travel out but...boy, does it get monotonous when we are returning back home. So we have nicknamed downtown Minneapolis as "the point zero". The number line for any journey starts and ends there for us.

For Friday night stay, we had made reservations at Janesville ( about 30 miles south of Madison). We planned to do some sightseeing around that area, but when morning came, it was raining badly and we could only head down south to Chicago.
We arrived at the Magnificient mile - walked by each and every fascinating shop and sipped a latte every hour. We were then off to Devon Ave - the South Asian shopping haven, for a "quiet" dinner. We only then realized that "quiet" canNOT be a word associated with Devon.
It competes straight-up with T Nagar Ranganathan street without losing any of the zing - whether it be the crowd or the noise or the merchandise. You can see hordes of women shopping gold like they do in Thanga maligai as if there is no tomorrow and the queue standing outside Saravana Bhavan is only more than what it is in T nagar. On this particular Saturday when we went, Patel was running special discounts like 4 maggies for 1 dollar and such- need I say anything about the rush now :)
We were totally beaten. We entered into one of the less crowded restaurants knowing that food was going to be bad (and yes, it was bad) but the items were priced less than half of what they are in Minneapolis and we didn't feel too bad about wasting.

The whole of second day we spent at Ohio street beach and Navy pier enjoying the sun.



We went around Chicago downtown and Millenium park a few times to check out the views and we were off to Palatine (where we stayed). The best part of our Chicago stay was having Caramel creme espresso at Oberweis . I did not know that having coffee made with organic milk was this heavenly.

Monday noon after having breakfast at Panera ( and coffee at Oberweis again :)) we left Chicago and reached Madison at around 3 pm.
It is a very small town famous for being the capital of the Dairyland state and of course for University of Wisconsin. We walked down the State street lined with restaurants,espresso bars and shops that reminded me of Dilli Haat and enjoyed the evening sun sitting by the shores of Lake Monona. We then headed back home and were in EP at 9:30 pm. This trip was tiring enough, I dont think we could have ever managed a 16 hr- 3day trip to Niagara. Now-back in sweet home!

Sep 11th : Day 3 in Chicago, IL

Well...I have said it and there it was, the LAST day in Chicago before we headed back home. We decided to vacate the room and then see the one place we had missed out in our plan- Botanic gardens. It was incessantly raining and we took our chance to visit the place that I refused to strike off my “places to visit” list. After a lovely English breakfast of muffins, crackers and coffee at the Garden Café, we ventured into the wet and drippy gardens.

It was definitely worth the trouble. From fruit and vegetable garden to rose garden to japanese gardens, they had it all.

I only wish it wasn’t raining so badly that day and we would have spent more time there. But then, there was a gain because of this too. We got an early start back home and so could touch Milwaukee taking a deviation on our way back home. We hardly had 2 hours to explore this place before we headed back home. The comfort of home after 3 days of maddening excursions seemed very inviting. And so, after 6 hrs of flying at 80 miles an hr, we reached home at 1 am! That’s ok…can’t I do this once more soon:)

Sep 10th : Day 2 in Chicago, IL

The second day in Chicago was the most enjoyable time in the whole trip.
The morning of 10th, we started off early and headed to Devon Street for our breakfast at Udipi café. After a delicious helping of idly- vada and piping hot filter coffee, we were back in form to hit the roads.

This is a picture of Devon Street( the Indian side) It feels like you're walking on Ranganathan street and you just have to think of an item pertaining to India and you are sure to find it here.







We traveled down the Shoreline drive absorbing each sight and smell. Admiring the shoreline beauty driving at a 50 miles an hour is a bit difficult and so we decided to walk down the beach to our first spot for the day- Navy Pier. We still hadn’t gone on cruise and were worried that we wouldn’t be able to do that in a cloudy weather. Just as we’d guessed, most of the cruise lines were closed or were doing a dinner tour and we didn’t have time for that. But at around 3 o clock, we did find one line that would take us on a shoreline cruise at 4. We jumped with joy and to kill an hour’s time we hopped into a Ferris wheel. And this didn’t let us down either.
We headed back to the cruise and I am not going to even attempt writing about it. All I would say is, don’t ever miss it if you go to Chicago. :)

The view from the top of Ferris Wheel was awesome with a magnificent view of the city’s skyline and a good view of the lake too.

We were back on our way to see the botanic gardens when we happened to notice a Hershey’s Shop.Now, can any chocolate lover ever let that go? So there we were in this 3,600 square foot shop as “factory workers” (we were given caps by that name) and watched a “Hersheyizer” sing songs and make cup cakes for the kids.

We rushed out of this place as it was getting dark and were on track again to botanic garden but it was not chocolates that stopped us this time but the mesmerizing Bahai House of Worship. There are only 8 such temples in the world and with such splendid architecture and lovely gardens, it was impossible not to go in.
But, by the time we came out, it was already well past eight and the sun had set. It was no use going to the gardens and so we drove to the other side of Chicago to see China town. Most of the shops close at 7pm and we could see only a few of the gift shops open. So at around 9:30 we decided to leave the place as we had to still hunt for our “veggie” dinner. After several unsuccessful attempts, we managed to get some roti and dal packed from New Delhi restaurant at and the day ended at 12 with my hubby singing birthday song for me.

Sep 9th: downtown Chicago and the trolley Tour

Since the weather was good on the morning of 9th, we decided that we should do the major part of sight seeing that day. So we headed towards downtown and after successfully wasting more than half a “world famous stuffed” pizza at Giordano's, we hopped on to the trolley tour in an open topped bus. Our first stop was at Millennium Park. This park is right in the center of downtown and is most admired for its world class architecture, landscaping and live performances. After watching Crown Fountain, Kapoor Sculpture, Jay Pritzker Pavilion and a Mexican concert ( it happened to be Mexican Independence day on 9th) we hopped back into our bus to continue the journey.

The Crown Fountain has 2 high glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers have changing video images and lights, and water cascades from the top of each making it one of the most enjoyable spots in the park.

The Kapoor Sculpture is a fascinating 110-ton elliptical sculpture designed by the celebrated artist Anish Kapoor. The sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly-polished stainless steel "plates" that create an elliptically-arched, highly reflective work with Chicago’s skyline and Millennium Park itself as a dramatic backdrop. What you are seeing here is a reflection of us on the sculpture.

This is the train that spiderman stops from falling into the lake :)

After this, we decided that we would not hop in and out of the tour but rather complete it in one go. We went on to see the Museum, Financial street, Hyatt and Sheraton hotels, theater district, Navy Pier and finally reached back at Sears Tower.

Thankfully it was not too cloudy and we were able to see the city's spread from the top of the tower. It is a breath-taking concrete jungle!I think the view is best in the evening when the sun just sets and all the street lights are on and the view is just overwhelming.

That was the end of day1 of our trip, but ofcourse the search for vegetarian food began ...thankfully we were able to head to devon street ( the indian forte in Chicago) before 10 and we managed to get some good food.

Sep 8th : The drive from Minneapolis

This trip was a birthday treat from my husband. Since we both loved traveling so much, we decided that we should travel out somewhere outside to celebrate the day. We decided that we should do small road trip of about 5-7 hrs and we checked out all the places where we could visit. We finally decided on Chicago as we had heard so much about it and it was about 6 1/2 hr drive from Minneapolis which also suited us very well. He took a day off on Monday and we were all set to go on our trip. We rented a car from Enterprise and booked acco in Motel 6 and we were off on Friday evening 5:30 pm on 94W.
Since I am very new to driving, we decided that I should start first and then during the later part of the day, he would take over from me. By the time we were in Wisconsin it started raining heavily and it had gotten real dark. We were also in a heavy truck traffic area. To top all this, there was about 12 miles of road work and I should tell you -it was one of my scariest drives. :) We had initially decided to stop at Madison, WI for dinner but we reached there only by 10 pm and knew that all the restaurants would be closed. So we continued to drive and at around 11 pm, we took an exit and had veggie delites at Subway- From here it was my hubby's drive and after crossing a zillion (no, actually 3 tolls) we managed to enter Chicago at 12:15 am. But the most difficult part of the journey was yet to come. We did not have a map of Chicago and Map Quest had let us down with directions. And so after 3-4 calls to the motel and searching nearly 40 miles around Schaumburg, we managed to find our motel. It was around 1 am when we finally hit the bed that day. Scary, tiresome but thoroughly enjoyable drive that was!