This morning we woke up at the KOA at Lake Michigan. Ricky got up to take a shower, and as per usual instructed me to “keep sleeping, my love” (isn’t he so cute??). But to his surprise, when he got back from showering I was dressed, had already pulled back all the curtains on the van, and was ready to go! Look at me, little miss early bird 
We drove just under 2 hours and hopped our first time zone to gain and extra hour for our first day in Chicago. First things first, we needed a place to park. We quickly stumbled upon a parking garage that the van BARELY cleared- 7’ – 2”. We found a spot and settled in our new Hotel Saetta. We walked down to check out all the parks along the Lake Michigan coast of Chicago. Millenium Park is pretty sweet. We took some pictures at Cloud Gate, which is basically a huge mirrored kidney bean. After that we checked out the Jay Pritzker Pavilion- the architecture of this theater is AMAAAAZING, check the pics. We continued walking through the rest of the parks, toured some gardens, and checked out the Buckingham Fountain. This fountain was super huge and powerful and pretty rad, but it doesn’t top the fountain we saw in Pittsburgh (I don’t think so, anyway). We slowly made our way to the Adler Planetarium, where we learned a lot about the life and death of stars and how our galaxy was formed. Space is insane to me… there are SOOOOOO many stars out there, some with their own planets in orbit!! Life has to be out there somewhere. After being reminded that earth is just a speck of dust in the universe, we walked back through the city in search of some lunch. We found a pizzeria that served GIGANTIC slices of pizza along with free “pop”. No joke, the slice was bigger than my head. We returned to Hotel Saetta for a brief afternoon rest that actually turned into our 1st successful nap in the van. We both crashed hard and slept for a full 2 hours. Strangely, we BOTH had dreams that we were site-seeing Chicago. Even in our sleep we’re still adventuring! After our nap we hopped aboard the “L” (Chicago subway) and headed north to Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field has these AWESOME roof-tops seats: they’re actually across the street from the stadium on top of the apartment buildings! I wanna watch a game from those seats. OK- on to my favorite part of today.. Ricky found a hip local hotspot called Uncommon Ground. It’s a small restaurant with live acoustic music performances featuring Chicago’s local bands. We got to see “Em and Them” and “Paper Thick Walls”- both REALLY good. I soaked up every second. I love live music. Acoustic guitar, great voices, a small intimate venue with a glass of wine = heavenly. Anyone who visits Chicago should check out this spot. After that, we headed back to Hotel Saetta and called it a night.
Next Stop: More Chicago.
-Jillian