I had a great day!

It started out with me riding in with Sheri on her normal train. She went to work and I went to Crepe Cliché. (Stupid stupid stupid name, but good food and coffee.) I had their breakfast crepe which had a lot of scrambled egg, cheddar cheese, bacon, and a little onion, and of course, a small triple Americano. They roast their own coffee beans on location and the coffee was very good. The view was also excellent. My table was directly overlooking the Chicago River and the Jackson Street drawbridge. The crepe was a great bargain at $3.89, and the Americano was also priced right at $1.69 plus $0.50 for the extra shot for a total of $2.19. It was a very substantial breakfast that turned out to be my main meal for the day. I sat and ate my crepe, sipped my coffee, and read my beloved Chicago Tribune for about an hour.

I was ready to start walking around the loop so I thought I would walk north on Wacker and visit one of my favorite stores; the Rand McNally map store. Well, it closed. Poop.

When I was working downtown I got to see the very start of the construction of a skyscraper, and I wanted to see how it turned out. I walked north on Wacker and took a right on Monroe. The building is on the north-east corner of that intersection. It is beautiful. The entire length of the lobby, which is an entire city block, is filled with 20-foot tall live bamboo! The beds that the bamboo are growing in is covered in small black stream rocks with small (1 foot tall) fountains of water scattered around about every ten feet. A very neat affect.

I kept walking east on Monroe and discovered a little gem. There are hardly any benches in the Loop to sit down and take a breather. There is a little landscaped garden on the north-east corner of Monroe and Wells with at least six benches. I didn’t stop in, but made a mental note for future excursions downtown.

I then remembered about a year ago when I was looking for a place that roasted their coffee locally that there was a place roughly near DePaul's Loop campus near Jackson and State, so I started heading in that direction.

I stopped and watched some demolition work for about ten minutes.

I wasn't finding any coffee place, so I called Sheri and had her Google the terms I could remember. After a couple minutes of looking she found the place and gave me the address.

Before I went to find the coffee place I happened along a really cool bookstore. It is the largest architecture bookstore in the world, and is called The Prairie Avenue Bookshop. They have been in business for 44 years, and in its current location for 11 years. You can click the picture to see the full-sized image of the interior of the store. Very nice. I could spend several hours hanging out in there.

I then continued on my quest for the coffee shop. It is called Intelligentsia Coffee, and it is outstanding! I, of course, had my now standard small triple Americano and read the Wall Street Journal. By this time it was a little after 11 AM, so I called Sheri and told her to meet me there since it was in the direction she had to walk anyways to get to the L line we needed to ride.

The reason for my day off was that my boss had two tickets to today's Cub's game that he couldn't use and gave them to me. I had been thinking about taking a day off just because I felt like I needed to, so this worked out perfectly. Sheri got to the coffee shop at around 11:30 AM and we continued on to take the Red Line north to Addison Avenue which is where Wrigley Field is.

Once we got there we had a little over an hour to kill before the game started at 1:20 PM. We found a Mexican restaurant that my boss recommended. I was still full from my breakfast so we split two appetizers and I had a Diet Coke. We split a skirt steak quesadilla and a chicken mole. They also had excellent chips and salsa on the table.

Sheri was concerned about the sun being in her eyes so we stopped and bought her an official Cub's ball cap. It looks very cute on her.

We made our way to the park and our seats. They were excellent. Section 208 which is in the dark purple area in the upper left of the diagram. You can click on the diagram for the full-sized image.

The seats were in the shade the whole game, so even though it was around 70º for the game, with the lake breeze blowing steadily on us it was actually pretty chilly. I am glad I didn’t wear shorts like a lot of people did, and that I had my jacket.

Unfortunately we lost to Colorado, 5-2.

We made our way back to the Loop on the extremely-crowded-with-Cub's-fans L. We got off at the Jackson Street station, walked west on Jackson and stopped in Intelligentsia Coffee again for a couple of iced coffees for the walk back to Union Station. At Union Station we split a large order of fries from Gold Coast Hot Dog, and I also had a char dog. That will probably be my dinner.

I am going to finish up this post, take a shower, and then we are going to watch White Noise.

This was in the Mexican restaurant before the game.












I thought this self-portrait turned out pretty good!


The bleachers you see on top of those buildings are not owned by the Cub's. People built the bleachers and then charge people to watch the game from them.


Everyone standing during the 7th inning stretch singing Take Me Out To The Ball Game. They always have a celebrity lead everyone in the song. Today it was just a local radio host.


This is from the L platform while we were waiting for the train back to the Loop. The place was packed. I'm glad I wasn't driving.


This woman was so drunk I don't even think she knew she was missing her shirt and bra. Sheri said I was only allowed to post one picture of her.