Day 008 – Making up for the past few days.
Some of you might find the new thing I tried past couple days a bit lame. I assured you that the next couple posts would make up for it.
My husband was going to Chicago to attend a conference so I tagged along. The first new thing I tried was flying with Porter from the Toronto Island Airport. “www.flyporter.com” I was quite impressed. It took us the same amount of time to get to the Island Airport as to Pearson International Airport. The bonus was that we didn’t have to arrive 3hrs prior, instead 1.5hrs only. The waiting lounge was comfortable with complimentary newspaper, coffee, tea, and snacks. The plane was small but roomy. Also since it didn’t carry many passengers (max capacity of the plane – 70 passengers), boarding was extremely quick.
During the short flight, Porter offered lunch, drinks (including alcoholic beverages) and snack. All “COMPLIMENTARY”. It’s pretty impressive for lower price, better service, they could offer some much while other airlines charges for snacks, drinks, headphones… or anything else they could think of. The flight attendants were polite as well. I couldn’t believe it. Too bad Porter only fly to limited locations.
After arriving Chicago, we checked into a new hotel in town “La Quintas”. It’s nothing fancy but decent and clean. It’s right in the heart of downtown. Since it’s a Sunday, it’s like a ghost town with all the offices being closed. We asked the front desk for some suggestion on restaurant so we could have a snack to tie us till dinner. They suggested Giodano’s and Italian Village.
We came acroos Giodano’s first and decided to give it a try. “www.giordanos.com/main.php” We wanted something small and quick so we ordered an appetizer platter and “SMALL” chicken Parmesan. We didn’t want the deep dish pizza because it would take too long and too heavy. When the food came, we were both surprised with the portion. It was HUGE!!!! We couldn’t finish them and thought we should just ordered the chicken Parmesan between the 2 of us. The appetizer platter included breaded mushroom, breaded zucchini and breaded mozzarella. They were very crispy and the coating was quite thin which I enjoyed. As for the chicken Parmesan, the chicken was a bit too thin and chewy. It had more coating than the chicken itself. The pasta was just “Meh”.
After the meal, we went to the Willis Tower, formerly known as Sears Tower. We went up to the Skydeck which had these glass boxes one could walk out to that sticked out of the building at 103 storeys high. I didn’t consider to have a fear of height but standing on just a piece of glass 103 storeys high didn’t give me a good feeling but hey, I tried something new.
We walked around town for a bit and was just so happened we were at the dock where Wendella boat cruise was at 4pm. This was when they have their architecture boat cruise. I managed to convince my husband to got on with me. Aside from being freezing cold, I highly recommended this at the beginning of any first Chicago visit. The tour guide “Sandra” was very informative about the buildings along the river and I learned quite a bit from her.
After being frozen from the boat cruise, we were contemplating where to have dinner. We went to Italian Village as recommended by the hotel staff. At first it seemed to be a good choice. It was really busy. As they took us in, we walked through the restaurant and notice the decor was quite interesting with paintings and buildings to create a small village feeling. It sort of reminded me of “Franky’s tomato” in Markham, Ontario (Canada). As the hostess continued through the restaurant, we started to wonder where they were going to sit us. Turned out to be this tiny cramped room right next to the kitchen in the back of the restaurant with a big table there already with LOTS of kids screaming and yelling. Okay…. we sat down and the waitress came. She wasn’t too polite and since we only asked for water, she just left right away. Some guy quickly ‘dropped’ of the water and left. We were there trying to ignored the noisy kids and the skipping music they were playing but when I saw a cockroach climbing up my husband’s arm, that was the last draw. We were OUT OF THERE…. Well, we tried but it didn’t work out.
We went to a familiar place instead…. McDonald’s and called it a night.
