A wonderful City- Chicago!

Well, we recently went to Chicago to see our friends who are moving out of US and what a great time I had. I actually have not seen lot of cities in Midwest. Traveled to bunch of places in East coast and South but never really got a chance to see Midwest. we landed on a friday night. Uneventful, short and sweet flight took us to this wonderful city which just amazed me. Tall buildings, livable downtown, metro conectivity, a smaller version of NY..just more cleaner :)
Our friends live in downtown and the view from their building was mind blowing, view of lake Michigan on one side, down on other. Not to mention full view of football stadium. Next day we went to take a tour of the city and what to say, Maginificant mile was definately magnificant. we started with John Hancock building and went up to their sky lounge. We luckily got a seat next to the window with a full view of Lake Michigan . It was frozen and I have never seen a frozen lake before.It is definately nice, different than summer time. While I was sitting by the window enjoying the view, everything looked so small and petty. We had a drink and headed over to the Magnificant mile again. Made a quick stop at the mall and got to do some shopping. I had two guys( my hubby and a friend)with me, so had to rush but they were more paient than I expected. After that, made a stop at grand lux cafe which is another version of Cheese cake factory. Their pinapple upside down cake was out of the world! By now, it started to get dark and chilly. I still wanted to walk to our friend's home but as soon as I crossed the river, I just could not take the cold. It numbed my face if you can imagine how it feels :)
Second day started with a visit to Indian Market where we had parathas, a pan and ofcourse sweets. On our way back we saw that people were walking out of the stadium as Chicago bears game was over and bears had won. I was impressed at enthu level of the crowd who came out to watch the game in 5 degrees temprature. We ended up checking out a condo on sale right on Lake Michigan. It was really a treat! Evening ended with dinner with friends who we had not seen in a while and it was delightful. We paid a visit to Chicago's popular glass bean which reflects image of Chicago downtown in it and is a piece of art. Right next to that was ice skating ring where people were lined up for their turns to skate. It amazed me that people were so enthusiatic in such a cold weather. I guess you get used to cold weather after a while. It was around 7 degrees in F. Well, our visit won't be complete without listening to blues. We went to Blues Chicago in the evening and it was super crowded. Music was really nice and ambience was great. By now we were tired and decided to head home and next day flew back. All in all, it was a wonderful visit to a beautiful city, company of great friends and it made us realize that its not the city, its the people who live there make it beautiful and wonderful time we had with our friends made it even more memorable for us! Thanks GSV for being great friends! Chicago- I just loved it!!