Chicago Trip!

Paper Bicycle went to Chicago last month for the CHA Scrapbooking Show! Since this was my first time visiting, I'm going to regale you with all of the details of this fantastic trip!





First things first! To get to Chicago, we had to drive quite a ways through Minnesota and Wisconsin. On the way we stopped for some traditional Wisconsin nourishment: cheese.





There was fudge at Mouse House also, so of course we had to get some of that. When Chris wasn't looking (Chris is healthy), we quickly bought some more, which is why there is so much.



Up until this trip, I had never passed through a toll booth. We came across one at the Wisconsin/Illinois border. I had to take a picture of that.



After awhile passing through toll booths became irritating challenges of counting out obscure amounts of change as fast as possible. I commend those of you that do this daily.

We attended the CHA show first thing the next day. It was great and we met a lot of fantastic people!
After that, we were free to wander about the city so we moved to the first of our two target locations: Lincoln Park.





Lincoln Park is beautiful and made me think that it might even be possible that Chicago might even rank in my list of favorite places. Unfortunately, our spirits and energy started to wilt fairly quickly. We were doing quite a bit of walking and it was kind of hot.



We were not defeated by the weather! Instead, we took refuge in one of my favorite parts of the trip, Starfruit Cafe.







Reinvigorated, we were back to shopping. I think my favorite shop was Autrepart Nature, a French cosmetics store.



We also had to double back and check out Barker & Meowsky, a pet gift store that we had passed earlier. I believe Twinkle and Atari got new collars from this establishment.



Finally we stumbled into one of my other favorite things: a tea shop. I still lament the fact that Argo Tea does not have a place in Minneapolis.





That was it for that day. We returned to the hotel and proceeded to make patterns for the rest of the night.

The following day we headed over to our other location of choice, Wicker Park. I really wanted to see Quimby's (which we did), but there were tons of other really great places and the overall feel of Wicker Park reminded me a lot of our own Uptown.





We ate lunch at Jerry's Sandwiches . All of it was excellent.

Lindsay's apple mango sandwich


Francesca's bruschetta



Chris's veggie burger


For dessert, we got macarons at Alliance Bakery.




Rose and Strawberry flavored


After more shopping/window shopping, we also found we had to stop for coffee. We really had to stop for coffee when we saw this.



The coffee at the Wormhole is really really good. What attracted us, though, was the copious amounts of nerd happening inside. As you know, we're all pretty nerdy on some level or another.




The only thing better than a DeLorean is a Police Public Call Box.

I also got to see a flux capacitor. This is groundbreaking in my career of nerdery, since only the week before I did not know what a flux capacitor was.


Points if you can guess what that thing beneath the flux capacitor is.

One of our final Chicago stops was to an organic coffee/produce shop. It smelled very very good in there.



After one more Starfruit Kefir smoothie, we were off again, back to home sweet Twin City home.