After I get home on Friday, I'll post about the NYC trip, but let me just tell you it was fantastic. We had great weather (that wasn't predicted), we had reasonable crowds (that weren't expected) and we did everything (and more) that we wanted to do. We all agreed that if we tried to re-create this trip, it would never happen as well as it did this time. Thanksgiving in NYC v. 2009 was one for the books. But more on that later.
On Monday, Mom and Mac flew back to SC and I flew on to Chicago to meet my best Brazilian gal-pal Gisele and her husband Flavio. Flavio had a medical conference to attend and Gisele and I had a retail therapy conference to attend.
Fortunately, the SC-bound flight got off on time. The Chicago flight was delayed nearly two hours because of bad weather. Finally when it was time to board, everybody gathered close to the gate entrance. It was at that point that I noticed TSA agents flanking the doors of the gate and talking to the gate agents. Was this standard protocol for the Newark airport? I glanced around at other gates that were boarding and didn't see one other TSA agent. Clearly something was up. We got ready to board and still the men were there. When it came to be my turn, I handed over my boarding pass which was scanned and handed back and I entered the gateway ramp. At that point, a TSA agent was exiting and I heard an agent at the gateway entrance ask "did you find her?", to which the exiting agent said "she wasn't in there".
Ummm. What?
Who is "she" and did you check all the bathrooms for her? Any other ideas where she might be?
So it's a 2 hour, 1 minute flight from Newark to Chicago and I kept one eye opened the whole time watching out for "her". All's well that ends well. The flight was uneventful and for that, I'm eternally grateful.
And now I'm here in Chicago which really might be one of my my favorite cities in the world. My first trip here was in 2000 when Jimmy and I ran the Chicago Marathon with my best friend Caroline. Allow me to tell you there are better and less painful ways to celebrate your 30th birthday, but we spent a great week in Chicago (most before the marathon when we could actually still walk) and a love affair was begun.
My second trip to Chicago was with my dear FDIC friend Brenda. We escaped young children (she has a daughter who's 3 days older than Mac) for a girls getaway when the children were nearly 3 years old. As a first-time mother who'd been tethered to her young child (in those nearly 3 years, I'd only spent 1 night away from Mac), a few days in Chicago was a gift from the heavens above and the love affair with this city continued.
Now I'm back in a different season altogether. Both a different season in my life (a geographically single mother with a very active 7 year-old all-boy boy) and a different season of the year (Christmas with all the lights and decorations and festive feel) and the love affair blossoms.
Today has been lovely. After the grit and dirt and smells of NYC (and I LOVE NYC so don't misread anything here), Chicago seems downright clean and sparkly. There aren't nearly the crowds that descended on NYC for Thanksgiving weekend, plus I'm not hanging on to a young boy, terrified that he'll get swept away from me by the crowd. The weather has been beautiful today -about 50, brilliant sunshine, blue skies - so that didn't hurt anything either. They're saying Friday's high could be 29. My blood isn't that thick and this could definitely hurt the love affair. Good thing I'm departing Friday morning!
And if you come to Chicago and are looking for a great hotel, I can recommend the Hotel Felix. It's about 5 blocks off the Magnificent Mile, so it's convenient to all the action, but when you get in your hotel room, it feels like a peaceful oasis. The Felix is an eco hotel, so the carpet is made out of something recycled and the key card is made out of corn and other biodegradable products. I'm not an eco-freak, so all this environmental friendliness guilted me into not leaving my towel on the floor to signal I wanted a clean one after just one use. That's the only negative as far as I can tell. To make up for that, the bath prodcuts are WONDERFUL, the bed linens are FABULOUS and the color scheme uses these lovely, calming earth tones. I could live here forever in room 214.
I will close for now, but promise to post more on NYC and Chicago, especially after I get the photos downloaded. Hugs from the Windy City to you from me!
No comments:
Post a Comment