lisa and i went shopping on tuesday. actually, i really just went for her. i'd pretty much finished all my shopping. we walked and walked. for hours and hours. we planned on going to the art institute of chicago museum. in the summers, they are opened until 9p and if you go pass 5p, it's free!! 
on the way, we went through the millenium park. if you look in the middle of the picture (above), you can see a tiny tiny reflection of me and lisa in the bean. the park is really lovely. there are gardens and sculptures, everywhere. it was a great summer day to be out and about.upon arriving at the art institute, it turns out that they were closed!! the free summer nights had ended, the day before! what horrible luck. so we did some more shopping while waiting for mien to get out of work.
we had dinner at kamehachi at the streeterville location where angel is the restaurant manager. we got there before mien so i had a drink at the bar. it was a tokyo cosmo and was yummy in my empty tummy. needless to say, i inhaled the edamame. i ate tons, as usual. so so many rolls... we had the dragon rolls, the green turtle rolls, the spicy tuna rolls and the rainbow rolls. on top of these rolls, mien & i shared the steak teriyaki. mmm meat. delicious!
angel mentioned that it was going to rain on wednesday, so if we wanted to see the hancock observatory, we ought to go after dinner. and we did. it was super crowded. i think everyone had the same idea we did. the hancock lounge is on the 99th floor of the john hancock center. as we were seated, this group sitting in a prime viewing booth, got up to leave. our cocktail waitress offered us the table as some much older people tried swiping it from us. denied! ha! stupid old lady said they'd tip better. people suck, don't they? despite them, it was a happy ending to a really long day.day eight - september 3rd, field museum & white castle
our one day of culture was here, at the field museum. the field museum is chicago's museum of natural history. it took forever to get there on the bus, and then, it took another forever to get tix. there was one cashier talking to these people f-o-r-e-v-e-r. geez. so we got the basic tix figuring we didn't have time for the special exhibits. seeing all the animals was really interesting. it's amazing to see wild animals up close and personal like that. thank goodness they are long dead and stuffed! the bird exhibit seemed to go on and on and on. if you like birds, this is the place to go to see them. so so many birds. we spent a lot of time looking at the animals. on the other side was chicago history. we breezed through it. it wasn't as interesting as the animals. we thought we'd been there for 2 hours and it felt like they were closing so we rushed out. while riding the bus downtown for some more shopping, i realized we were an hour off. we were only at the museum for an hour or so which was fine because it gave us another hour to shop around.
i found myself back at the water tower place mall since lisa wanted to try out some wow bao buns on the first floor. we tried the coconut custard bun the day before and wanted to try out the savory buns. here i am eating the chicken curry bun which was quite tasty. it was very popular there too. we don't think it would do as well here since there are tasty buns everywhere in california!mien, linda & lisa go to white castle:
we had quite the adventure going to white castle. none of us had ever gone. mien's been in chicago for about 8 years now. it was our last night so we decided to go. first, mien had to reserve a zipcar to take us there. we did that on my phone. then we had to get a cab to the car from where we were. we got there, saw the red mini she reserved but her card didn't work. so we called in and it turned out that rather than reserving the car at 10:30p, we reserved it on 10/30 as in october. so, she changed that reservation to 11p that night. it was 10:40 or so and we couldn't get into the car until 10 minutes before the reservation. mien decided to walk home to get a pillow. while we were back at her place, she'd left her bag there and just took along the pillow and her wallet. we get back to the car and oops, she'd left her zipcar card in her purse. so, we go back to her place and then back to the car. we get into the mini. this was my first time in a mini which is funny because i wanted to buy one before i got gigi! i pulled up white castle in my vz navigator and it gave us the nearest locations. apparently, it was slightly off. we ended up on the freeway and in an area that mien had never really been to. after countless wrong turns and mien nearly running a stop sign, we made it. we weren't sure that we'd get back in time to return the car after having to go back and forth from her place. we'd made it back just in time with 10 minutes to spare! after passing this house (with a bunch of guys hanging out front) on the corner about 10 millions times, they saw us one last time and i heard one of them say, there, those girls are!
