On Saturday, my houseguests went to Milwaukee to visit Anna and the girls. I thought I would work on my tutorial, but I ended up catching up on life: cooking and baking, talking with Boris for over an hour, home accounting, and Prairie Postgres business.
And then all of a sudden, it was their last full day in Chicago! It turned out that I didn’t have a chance to feed them an American breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, so I had to cover that, and then we went to the Loop to check out old skyscrapers, which we also somehow neglected to include in our prior excursions.
Then we headed North, stopping at the Bridgehouse Museum:
Then we went to the Starbucks Reserve, because I ike to change people’s opinion about the Starbucks. The only problem was that it was a weekend tourist crowd, so it took a long time to get everything we wanted to eat in separate lines, but we go everything, including the expresso martinies:
Finally, we went to the Glenwood Art Fest. I made a mistake taking a bus from the Starbucks Reserve. It was the Chicago Air and Water Show, and the traffic in the direction of Lake Shore Drive simply didn’t move! After an hour of staying on a barely moving bus, we got off and walked to the Fullerton station, and finally arrived at the Art Fare.
I know that my friends took more pictures, so I will post more when they share!
These are the best presents one can get for Christmas! I have already shown the present I received from my friends living in Ireland – chocolates and an expresso-maker ornament.
Next was a package from my friend from New Zealand: cookies baked by her triplet daughters :), chocolates, and a Christmas pendant:
Last time I wanted to go to the Starbucks Roastery I found it closed, and was very disappointed, especially because the weather was awful, and I would never thing about walking in such weather if not for holiday martinis.
On Thursday it occurred to me that it was possibly the last opportunity in 2024 to get to the Roastery. I was going to a CSO concert in the evening, and also I had a ticket to the Art Institute lecture right before that, but I could still fit an eggnog martini before that!.
I ended up leaving work a little bit later than I hoped, and then waited for martini a little bit longer than I thought it would take, and then I went to the second floor to get food. After I finally set down I realized that if I still wanted to get to the lecture I would have to hurry up and would still be a little bit delayed. Having how the week was progressing, and having that I had something to celebrate (the PG Day Chicago website was finally up) I decided not to rush!
Several more things are left from last weekend’s trip to Michigan. We had two great positive experiences in Detroit: Michigan Central and Ford Plant, and one-and-a-half bad experiences. A “half-experience” was that, once again, it appeared to be challenging to find any relatively fast and decent quality food, and one really bad – it appeared to be impossible to find a coffee place in the afternoon. I ended up having the second coffee of the day when we returned to Lena’s place.
On Sunday, we stayed in Ann Arbor and spent most of the day in the Downtown area. Lena was sure that coffee wouldn’t be a problem there, but the place where we stopped to get coffee turned out to be really bad. Lena went back to the coffee shop and asked for a new one, but it was only marginally better.
Finally, Lena spotted Roos Roaster and said that they should be good. When we entered, I told a barista that I had to have one positive coffee experience and what he would recommend. He recommended a long, and it was perfect.
Both I and the reputation of Ann Arbor were saved!
On this trip, I rediscovered Lithuanian food. I recalled everything I liked many years ago, and we made sure never to eat at the same place twice, and try different foods each time.
On the first day, there were zeppelins and Lithuanian kvass, and this kvass was so incredibly good, that we never skipped it:). The one which we tried in the first place was the best though.
Zemaiciu was another thing I had very fond memories of, as well as other kinds of potatoe-based foods.
Great pre-Christmas gift from my friend! I love flavored coffee, and it is so difficult to find flavor with no sweetness!
The only problem is boldness or absence of it. I do not understand how you can possibly make 8-10 cups from this packet. I started from 4 cups, and it turned out that I needed to make only three cups out of one package for the correct strength. Which is pretty much what I have for breakfast, so the problem was resolved 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 