Meet Me in Chicago

Yesterday was such a fun day! I got up bright and early and took the Amtrak train from Springfield to Chicago to meet up with my good friend Emily. The train was a really nice way to get to Chicago because I didn't have to mess with traffic, tolls, or just driving in general. Here is my first good view of the city from the train.

Emily was waiting for me at Union Station. It was so great to see her!!!! We were roommates back in 2003 when we spent a semester in Nauvoo with BYU Travel Study (I also want to give a shout-out to our other roommates Barb and Nicole--we talked A LOT about you girls yesterday, and we wished that you had been there with us!!!!). The four of us had a lot of fun together in Nauvoo back in the day :) Emily was passing through Illinois on her way to Utah, and I was so happy that we could get together! Our first stop for the morning was the Art Institute of Chicago.

We had fun looking at all of the paintings--but we had to pose with my very favorite painting: American Gothic! It was unusually difficult for me to keep a straight face (trying to look like the people in the painting). Emily was much better at it than I was. I just love this painting so much. I'm really glad that Mom and I ventured into the boonies of Iowa to find the house from the painting in the little town of Eldon back in 2008 :)

After we had our fill of art, we went to a fun place called Giordano's for some seriously deep Chicago-style deep dish pizza for lunch. The pizza was AMAZING! It was fun to catch up on each other's lives and reminisce about the good old days over some tasty pizza.

Then we went to Millennium Park to the big "bean" statue to take our picture.

At the bean again.

Then we walked to Navy Pier--one of the coolest places in Chicago!

At Navy Pier with the city behind us.

The view of the city from Navy Pier is so beautiful!

I had big plans that we would take the water taxi from Navy Pier back to downtown . . . but unfortunately the water taxi service ended too early, so we had to walk back to Union Station. But at least Chicago is an exciting/interesting place to walk. We enjoyed watching the strange/creepy "face fountains." The main feature of these fountains is that they "spit" water every few minutes. But the water and the faces were not lined up quite right, so it looked like the water was coming out of their lips--very strange.

The face fountains are much more pretty when you just get a picture of the water running off the top. It was such a beautiful day in the city!

On our way back to the train station we stopped for some ice cream and cookies, and then it was so sad when we had to say goodbye. But I am so glad that we got to spend such a fun day together in Chicago! As my train was leaving the city I was able to get a picture from the same place that I did when I was arriving in town :) Chicago really is a beautiful city, and Emily and I had such a fun day there together!