When Jenn and Teddy were here, we spent a day at the Navy Pier. One of the things I wanted to make sure we saw was The Crystal Gardens.
I couldn’t figure out how we missed seeing them when we were in Chicago for BlogHer ’07, since they are right across from the entrance to the Children’s Museum where we spent a considerable amount of time.
But we did miss them and that’s too bad… I wonder what it looks like in there at night… is it open at night? I should find out and we should go back.
The gardens themselves are interesting enough. The spitting fountains were amusing. The glass ceiling with the huge fans was pretty interesting. The views were as awesome as you’d expect.
We’ve visited a lot of Farmers Markets since moving to Chicagoland and our favorite is still the Skokie Farmers Market.
It isn’t as big as Evanston’s. And it’s not as good for people watching as Deerfield’s. It isn’t as close as Glenview’s or even Northbrook’s. It’s not as ‘interesting’ as Wilmette’s French Market.
It’s just a basic, small, Farmers Market. Open on Sundays (which might be part of why we like it…)
Last Sunday, it was a little disconcerting though. Some of the vendors were set up in the “wrong” spots! That totally threw us off. Vendors should set up in the same place every time, darn it.
We’ve been looking at the Sugar Bowl, in Des Plaines for ages. Wishing it was open, wishing we had been able to visit it back in its hey day. And then, it happened. We saw signs appear in the window indicating it was going to re-open. And it did.
We went to the Sugar Bowl today, for a brunch.
I ordered a California Omelet that was HUGE. It came with home fries and pancakes. Home fries were fine, not bad – not good, just fine. The rest of the meal was excellent. (And the waitress kept refilling our coffee, which I appreciated.
TW’s mom ordered the mixed berry french toast. Huge serving and she said it was good. It looked good.
TW ordered the Reuben Club and again, talk about serving size. Monster. I nicked a fry and it wasn’t bad, wasn’t bad at all. With a little more salt and pepper it might have been excellent. TW says the Reuben club was fabulous. And it looked good. I am tempted to order a Reuben on my next trip (not the club because I don’t do bacon.)
Loved the Sugar Bowl. Enjoyed every second of our visit. We’ll go back, definitely.
Very soon after moving to Chicagoland, we found ourselves a wee bit lost in that we’re not lost but we don’t know exactly where we are sort of way. I think it might have been right after we dropped the u-Haul off and we were headed home. Or headed home via some cicuitous route that would lead us to find some place new and interesting, something to eat and also provide us with excuses to not be at home unpacking boxes in a house we didn’t want to live in.
Whatever. We were driving around and instead of heading toward Cook County, we headed toward Lake County and found ourselves in Northbrook right on the edge of Deerfield. I remember seeing a sign for Nickel City and thinking a) arcade? b) some discount kind of shopping place? c) something else entirely? and not thinking about it again.
Shortly after, in some junk mail circular or junk coupon mailing, we discovered Nickel City was in fact an arcade. Every week there’s some new coupon for Nickel City savings and I’ve mostly ignored it.
Last month I actually visited the website to see if it might be worth checking out rather than ignoring. It seemed to be, worth checking out, I mean.
Arcade games that use nickels and not stupid tokens.
$2 admission fee per person.
Ticket games.
FREE old arcade games.
It sounded too good to be true so I didn’t take any real initiative and plan an adventure. TW, on the otherhand, decided this would be a fun outing for Liz’s birthday. So… we went.
I forgot the coupon at home, which was stupid but whatever it was still cheap. It wasn’t crowded AT ALL. The games did in fact take nickels and there were really free arcade games available. Lots of them. Pac-Man and Miss Pac-Man, even.
The games cost anywhere from one nickel to six. We each had a $5 bag of nickels and a couple dollars of nickels that I grabbed from our change bag. I didn’t use most of mine and gave them to the girls, who both ran out of nickels at just about the same time. TW also ran out of nickels and put another dollar or two into the machine to grab some more (because she couldn’t find me, which was weird but possible in that TW can’t find anyone sort of way.)
We all had a good time, playing games. The girls got more tickets than they’ve ever gotten before from an arcade experience and were pleased with the prizes they cashed them in for.
We spent right at $20 for four of us to spend about two hours playing all the games we could possibly play.
Nickel City = WIN.
The first time TW and I were shocked by the site of the Baha’i Temple was when we were here house hunting, in April ’08. I say shocked because there are a lot of Chicago travel guides that will tell you stuff like…
don’t run off the road when you see it… you come around the corner and there it is… and there’s a shock factor….
It’s true. You know it’s coming, but it surprises you. Every time.
I never really thought about going to visit it, on purpose. Getting out. Walking around. Looking inside. I mean it seemed cool but I just wasn’t compelled to visit.
Thankfully, my mom wanted to go.
It is one of the coolest buildings I’ve ever visited. It’s hard to explain why. You just have to go. Walk the gardens. Go inside. Look. Listen. Think. Just do it.
I’ve never met a Botanical Garden I really loved. I’ve visited quite a few and while they were nice to visit, I never felt compelled to go back. That all changed with a visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden and boy was that a shock.
Who would have guessed the arctic north would have such a wonderul place. Just a few miles from my house? And, as our fabulous tour guide said (over and over again) it’s all FREE! And we definitely intend to take advantage of the FREE! Pst, she really was fabulous. Great fun. The right type of attitude and personality for a tour guide. (More Videos of Chicago Botanic Garden, including a bunch of train shots.)
OK it’s only free if you don’t need to park a car. If you do need to park a car, it’s $20 a shot. Or if you don’t want to take one of the trams that carries you around the gardens. But, with a membership, the parking is FREE! And the trams come at a discounted price.
We did in fact buy a membership and we’re looking forward to many more visits this year – maybe even in the winter, when it’s snowy and icy.
The day we took my mom, we were there for hours and hours and we didn’t even make a dent in seeing everything – and we were exhausted. I think TW and I are going to make a spreadsheet and pick one piece of the garden to visit on each trip. That’s the only way to see everything. There’s just so much and it’s such a lovely place to visit.
The cafeteria isn’t great (but it has Wifi.) The library looks interesting but by the time we got there, we just wanted to sit in the air conditioning and rest for a bit. We were there during an orchid show and that was pretty interesting too.
We went back today, just me and TW, for the Farmer’s Market and that was nice. Small, only about 8-10 booths, including the Youth Garden kids who work at the Botanic Garden and sell the stuff they grow. I think we’ll probably sign up for a CSA box this fall… now that will be interesting.
I totally missed the opening day of Randolph Street Market and am disappointed. It’s only open on the last weekend of each month, from May – September. That doesn’t give us a lot of opportunities for fun antique shopping, particularly with the July dates being during BlogHer and the August dates being during TW’s birthday weekend.
I went ahead and purchased the season pass, hopeful that the valet parking and the admission to the extra events would make it worth it. We shall see.
We bought just a few things during our first visit. TW’s mom bought an aluminum cake holder (no idea why she did this but she did.) I bought a shirt for Michelle, for Christmas. TW bought cool retro pattern potholders.
We were tempted by some retro kitchen tables and chairs, a retro desk, some really fantastic wood furniture that would have solved all of our kitchen problems but won’t work now due to the wheelchair needs of TW’s mom.
Also tempted by huge neon signs, old toys from our childhood, and lots of other antiquey goodness that we do not NEED.
The other bakery on Central St, in Evanston… the one we thought we’d buy stuff for the meet up… is Tag’s Bakery. They definitely had good stuff but nothing that screamed “meet up”. If I wasn’t already aware that Jamie was bringing cupcakes, I probably would have grabbed some but who needs 500 cupcakes at a BlogHer meet up of 15 people? 
We did buy stuff just for us to eat. The lemon bars were excellent and the kids really enjoyed the eclairs. Some of my crew sampled their Florentine cookies and said they were fabulous.
Last month, we went in search of some sort of treat to take to the Pre-BlogHer meet up in Chicago and found ourselves on Central St, in Evanston. There are two bakeries on that street (not counting Foodstuff which has baked goods but is not just a bakery) and Great Harvest Bread Co was the one we did not think we’d buy anything from.
We were wrong. I think we spent $50 there!
We grabbed huge sticky buns and toffee chip brownies to take to the meet up and there were plenty for us to eat before and after. These things are HUGE so I cut them into quarters and a quarter was still huge. And they’re amazingly good.
We also grabbed a loaf of Apple Crunch bread, based on the recommendation of Prince J and RJ. They were right, it was awesomely delicious and I could eat the entire loaf (but didn’t.)
It’s a good thing this little bakery is not in the most convenient location for us (parking stinks) or I’d probably be there every week.
We ended up at Oz Park for a pre-BlogHer meet up and I was kind of excited to check it out. I am a Wizard of Oz fan. (Nobody else really is – well Jenn is but she wasn’t in town during our meet up.)
I loved the Dorothy & Toto statue and the Tin Man statue. Those were the only two I saw. And was there supposed to be a yellow brick road somewhere because if so, I missed it. (Not hard to do since we were there for a meet up and didn’t take much time to explore the park itself.
It was pretty crowded, lots of kids in the play area. And we did walk past the Emerald Garden which did look quite appealing. I’d go back to hang out (and grab an Orange Julius from across the street.)