Fri 19 Apr

Hotel is nice, almost next door to the one where we used to stay for the really reasonable Park N Fly. Surprisingly, that hotel is now a fenced off pile of rubble. Unfortunately, this hotel doesn't do a Park N Fly so it will not be a substitute when that is needed. They do, however, offer a free shuttle to the nearby train station so we didn't have to take our car at all to get to Frontera for an excellent dinner last night. We got to the Loop around 4:30 pm and our reservations weren't til 6:00 pm. It wasn't raining, thankfully, so we walked the streets and looked at all the interesting bars and restaurants in the area for over an hour. I have an uncomfortable stitch in my right side that gets worse from carrying my purse, so I was a little sore by the end of our walk. Felt even better to sit down in the bar for a margarita before dinner with some freshly made guacamole and chips. Dinner was absolutely delicious as it has always been at Frontera. Looking forward to Seasons 52 tonight. We have pretty much decided not to do the aquarium or a museum today, partially due to the expense of either parking or taking a taxi from the end of the train route in addition to expensive admission fees. We will just do our Chicago shopping today instead of tomorrow as planned, leaving us tomorrow to possibly find something else to do. We may come back to the hotel in the afternoon and take advantage of a nice exercise room. Breakfast buffet was very nice. I didn't even discover the other half, which features a do-it-yourself oatmeal bar, until after I had already consumed nice fresh scrambled eggs w/cheese and salsa and an unexpectedly light biscuit with non-greasy gravy and a delicious make-it-yourself yogurt parfait with fresh strawberries and granola. We are here tomorrow also, so I'm heading straight to the oatmeal with another yogurt parfait also. Opted to peruse a large, new Whole Foods, a Crate and Barrel, and the Woodfield Mall before returning to the hotel for a nap and catching up on the computer. Our dinner reservations are in less than two hours, about half an hour away, so I don't think there's enough time to get sweaty. We got over 8000 steps so far, so it hasn't been too sedentary. Food: 8:00 am 2/3 c scrambled eggs, 1 tbl shredded cheese, 1 tbl salsa, biscuit, 1/4 c gravy, 1/2 banana, 6 oz OJ, coffee, 1/2 c yogurt, 1/2 c strawberries, 2 tbl granola 12:00 pm 1 pc See's chocolates, samples of cheese,etc. at Whole Foods 1:30 pm !/2 c mango chicken salad, 1 c fruit salad, fruit iced tea 2:30 pm 1 pc See's chcolates, See's caffe latte sucker