Sweet Home Chicago

I'm back from Chicago and it was a well needed blast! My trip was filled with sight seeing, buildings, improv, partying, shows and even matzo.

Day 1
I was expecting a really stressful day at work but that never happened. My deadline got completely erased. I ended up having a pretty relaxed day.

By 4pm my mom came by my office to drive me to the airport. Since there was traffic, my mom decided to take a different route and accidentally made a wrong turn and brought us back to my office (also in traffic). So we started over and my mom made a second wrong turn and we got lost. It was hilarious. My brother called to wish me a good trip and he was on the speaker phone yelling at my mom to tell her which way to turn to get us back to the proper highway. What should have been 20 - 25 minutes ended up being almost an hour.

I got to the airport, hoped on the plane and 2 hours later was in Chicago! I made my way to the Subway (a.k.a. the El) and figured my way to the hotel. Due to construction (at 7:30 at night??) it took 2 hours and I got to my hotel pretty late. I was hoping to catch a show with my friend at the Second City but I missed out. I ended up calling it a night at 11:30pm

My hotel room was really nice. The bed was huge! It was a king size bed and could have easily fit 4 people in it. I then made it my goal of the trip to bring home 3 chicks.

I failed miserably.

Well... I didn't' actually try to bring home three girls ("hey want to see my huge bed??") but the thought of it was fun, haha.

Day 2

I woke up pretty early and arranged to meet my friend and fellow improviser in the city. I had time to kill so I headed to Grant park and saw a bunch of statues and this gigantic fountain. It was massive.

I walked through Millennium park where there was this gigantic metal "bean" which reflected everything. It was cool.

it turned out that the area we arranged to meet was the Theater District. Everyone had giant signs with light bulbs. The Chicago Theatre, the Oriental Theater. Even a McDonalds!

We ended up walking down State street looking for a place to eat. I was a picture taking whore and took snaps of everything. We crossed the river and I saw those famous twin buildings. While trying to take a picture two random guys stopped and asked if we'd like them to take a picture for us. Turned out they were from My City! What a coincidence!

We stopped for breakfast at the Temp Cafe. I ordered the Poor Man's Skillet. It was a layer of hash browns, a layer of melted cheeses and a layer of scrambled eggs. It was still passover, so when I was asked what kind of bread I wanted, I declined. That is until my friend opened his big mouth and admitted to the waitress I was Jewish. She then offered me matzo! I was totally shocked.

After breakfast we continued walking North until the John Hancock Observatory. It's famous for the view you see from the bar at the top on the 96th floor.

According to my tour guide, in 1981, a guy dressed in a spiderman suit climbed up the side using suction cups while the fire department was trying to get him down by hosing him down with water... It's also the same building where Chris Farley lived and overdosed.

We were getting close to our workshop time, so we hopped on the train and made our way to the comedy theater where my team was to perform. We walked around a but more and then did our workshop.

Afterwards, my friend brought me to this amazing vegetarian restaurant nearby. I ended up getting a veggie Philly cheese steak (in between matzo of course). It was quite delicious. I washed it down with a peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie dough milkshake which was surprisingly good.

At 8pm I caught an improv show. The first 2 acts were ok but nothing great. The headliners were 2 guys who were MadTV alumni. However, one of them was late because his plane got delayed. Eventually they announced he wasn't going to make it. His partner came out and said not to worry. That he would be doing a show and was going to experiment a little. He said he was going to need someone from the audience to join him on stage and do the show. I raised my hand but so did the guy in front of me and he got picked.

He was so excited.

He was an improviser from Toronto that I was talking to earlier. The Toronto guy was just about to get out of his seat, when the missing partner jumped out from backstage and took off his hat and jacket.

The Toronto guy looked so disappointed.

They started off really funny but I had to head out to the show my team was performing and ended up having to leave just after they started.

The show my team did was great. They had a lot of energy and really enjoyed being up there on stage. It was a competitive formatted game, meaning that my team was playing against the Chicago team. The Chicago team ended up winning but it was all for fun and games.

My whole team and I went looking for the official after party hosted by the festival but the bar we ended up was dead. After a quick beer and a stop to a dinner for a midnight snack, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

Read all about Day 3 and 4 in my next post!