Monday, October 21, 2013

The Cubs Game - Wrigley Field - August 2012

Jim has been looking forward to this day all week and it has finally arrived.  Pop in to Walgreens for our morning banana and apple .  Can't eat something that is going to bloat me when I am trying on dresses.  Find the directory, Jim stops breathing, there are five floors of ladies wear.  Off to the third floor we go.  The floor is huge. Luckily I am a pretty good window shopper.  We walk around the aisles and I find four dresses to try on.  Voila three I like, two I really like, settle on one.  Thirty minutes have gone by.  Jim heads for the fourth floor, I head for the street, time for something to eat.  A wave of relief passes over Jim's face.  Lol

Back to the hotel, do a little packing and then off for a walk to millennium park.  On the river they have these electric boats you can rent and we were waylaid watching two boats full of east Indians going in circles.  There was a forty foot cabin cruiser trying to back into a parking spot and one of these little boats got stuck behind it going in circles.  There were all sorts of water taxis and tour boats as well.  Absolute craziness.  I don't think Jim and I have laughed so hard.

Continuing on our walk we notice a crowd of people looking down at the river.  There are fire, police, parks and tour boats all watching about 10,000 little plastic ducks race down the river, propelled by the current and with a little help from the fire boat.  They were raising money for the special Olympics.




Interesting fact about the Chicago river, a hundred or so years ago it used to flow into lake Michigan.  The river and the lake were so polluted that a large number of their residents were dying from disease.  So what did they do, they dredged the river so that all their garbage would flow to St Louis.  The big problem they didn't think of was that they were basically draining the great lakes.  So to correct that they put locks in to control the flow of water to an acceptable level.

As we continue on our way we realize we can't gt across the river to millennium park and somehow taking a long circuitous route we end up back at navy pier. A quick bathroom break and we start heading back.  Our little boat riders are still struggling in the middle of the river.

A definite stop to visit in Chicago is the 16th floor of the trump tower and has a beautiful terrace looking down the river to the lake with great views of the wrigley and tribune buildings to name just a couple.  They also serve a great little drink called prossecco.  Did I mention that this is my new favorite drink.







Back to the room, a little more packing and we are heading to Wrigleyille to watch the cubs game.  Our first trip on the subway.  Felt just like Toronto, little old and lots of people.

100 steps from the subway is Wrigley Field, the 2nd oldest ballpark  in the states.  This is the field where Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones met.

The rain is starting, so we head over to the Goose Island Brewery Pub.  A Chicago microbrewery where all the beer is their own.  I tried a flight of beer which was four different kinds.  Favs were the 312 - nice and light and the blueberry, delish.  Definitely recommend the Stilton peppercorn burger, tasted homemade. 






Back to the field, where the game is under rain delay and so are our seats.  Jan and bob are taking care of our seats.  Everytime we moved under cover when we came back they would dry our seats for us.  Every worker from he hosts/hostesses to beer sellers to peanut sellers looked like they had worked there since the stadium opened.









Tarp on, tarp off, tarp on, tarp off.  Finally the game starts 8:30. The amount of movement t the game was amazing, probably didn't help that the fans had now been drinking for an hour and a half before the game started.

In the sixth end it was tied 3 to 3,when the rain started again. We head to the bathroom and stay long enough to watch the fans sing "take me out to the ball game".  A tradition started by Harry Caray, the cubs legendary announcer.







A great night, Jim was ecstatic, I can feel a baseball road trip coming up.

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