Chicago pt 1: Thursday and Friday

Warning: long post! But it's mostly pictures.
To celebrate my 18th birthday, Patrick flew Tessie and me out to Chicago to spend the weekend with him! It was a blast and a wonderful break from the monotony of the semester.

Flying out on Thursday evening.

After we dropped our luggage at Patrick's apartment, we walked to a restaurant for a late dinner. They had fancy fresh-squeezed juice which was delicious.

The view from one of his apartment windows.

On Friday the weather was beautiful, so we did our outside activities then. We began with brunch at a place called Brunch.

Then the walking tour commenced! We walked downtown first, including through this building, the Merchandise Mart. It's enormous--it takes up an entire city block. Inside are fancy stores.

We went inside a couple of the tile stores and pretended we were on HGTV.

A cool mailbox inside the Merchandise Mart.

After emerging back outside, we went over to the River Walk.

There is a reflecty ceiling over the walkway in case of rain.

We veered off the River Walk and headed for Millennium Park, where we met a lot more tourists.

The Carbide and Carbon Building, which looks black from far away.

We took pictures at the Bean, obviously!

We passed by the big amphitheater where concerts and other events take place.

And walked through the gardens, where the only things growing so far were wildflowers.

From Millennium Park we took the train to Lincoln Park.

A duck pond at the beginning of Lincoln Park Zoo.

Alpaca!

We stopped to eat popcorn and enjoy the sunshine. Then, after leaving the Zoo, we headed across the highway to walk by the shore of Lake Michigan.

This was my favorite part of the day. The water was calm, the weather was beautiful, and there weren't crowds of people.

We all got sunburnt.

We left the lakefront and headed for Patrick's old neighborhood, where we ate at a delicious Brazilian place.

The Guarana brought back lots of memories.

Then we went to the nearby Coffee & Tea exchange, where we bought some nice loose-leaf teas. From there we got some gelato and took a cab home. Later, for dinner, we went to a sushi place called The Sushi Cafe.

So many choices!

We thought we had ordered too much, but we ate it all. 

It was a lovely day, and we were quite exhausted by the end!