Breakfast in Chicago

During Worldcon itself, we made breakfast in our hotel room from milk and cereal, coffee and hard-boiled eggs, and sometimes Bob's Red Mill oatmeal, from Bockwinkle's grocery nearby, plus some scrambled eggs and bacon several mornings from camp food we'd brought with us, thanks to us having a fridge, coffee maker, and hot-water pot in the room. So today was the most adventurous breakfast of the trip, in that I ordered breakfast burgers from Smashburger, a couple of blocks west of the hotel.

( Historic Sites and Broken Windows )

The breakfast burgers were pretty good. I might get that again given a chance.

( When Negative is Positive )

After breakfast, which was relatively late in the morning as I actually got at least eight hours of sleep last night, job one was to get the screen on my company smartphone repaired. There was a place not excessively far from here that said they could do the replacement in 45 minutes. I left the phone with them and Lisa and I walked up and down the streets in the area, including looking in to Central Camera, which had a number of interesting things, but not anything that immediately grabbed Lisa's attention. When the cell phone shop called my personal mobile phone to let me know the smartphone was ready, we headed back over and collected it. It was a cash-only operation, so I'll have to put in for reimbursement from my Day Jobbe for the $88 repair, but at least I have a screen in one piece again. Fortunately for me (as I needed to do some Day Jobbe work yesterday), the cracks yesterday did not disable the phone entirely, as I needed it for 2-factor authentication codes.

We went back to the hotel because we were already feeling a little bit tired. We aren't up to anything too adventurous. So while it may seem like a waste having these extra days in Chicago in an expensive hotel room, we're grateful to have them to not have to deal with changing hotel rooms or any other hassles. Besides, I see that it's about 40°C in Fernley, and I'm much more comfortable here than I would be at home right now.

Time for Pizza -- and Lots of Walking

After getting back to the hotel after a couple of hours of walking around downtown, we considered our options. Lisa suggested that we could finally have the meal that everyone kept saying we should get while in Chicago: Giordano's Pizza.

( When in Chicago, Eat Pizza )

Lunch left us very full, and we told ourselves that we needed to get out and walk off as much of it was we could, so we decided to walk over to Navy Pier, which is about 2 km away from the hotel.

( To the Pier and Back )

We could have taken a water taxi back to near the hotel, as we were low on energy, but we decided to try and walk back, this time via the Lakeshore trail to the south side of the river, then swinging around to the south shore riverwalk. Unfortunately, while making the transition between the two paths, Lisa stepped in a chuckhole and went tumbling. She strained a muscle, and needed a few minutes to recover. Nothing seemed to be sprained or broken, but she was in poor shape. We continued at slow speed back toward the hotel.

( Kuma Bear, Trout, and More Chicago Skyline )

We slowly worked our way back to the hotel. Climbing the stairs from the Riverwalk up to Upper Wacker was a bit of a challenge. I carried Kuma Bear and his pack to make it a little easier for Lisa. When we got back to the hotel, Lisa (sensibly) declared that she was not going out again and sent me to Bockwinkle's to get some orange juice and a few other small things. We made dinner from the supplies we have (and now need to finish consuming).

( Night View )

According to my pedometer, I put in more than 17,000 steps today, and it certainly feels like it.

This is our penultimate night in Chicago. If Lisa's leg is up to it, we'll try to do something more adventurous than just walking around the streets tomorrow.