On Thursday morning, I got up early and took a walk down to Navy Pier. Although it looked like a fun place to spend a bit of time, I didn't linger there long. I hadn't come all the way to Chicago to visit amusement parks, but rather, to accompany my new bride on her shopping trip (he wrote sarcastically). We spent that afternoon walking up the Magnificent Mile, which is the stretch of Michigan Ave. north of the Chicago river where one finds Saks 5th Ave, Ralph Lauren, Bloomingdales, and all the other big American chain stores that Nesrine and I could not afford. In spite of not being able to purchase anything, we still had a blast checking out the sites:
The Chicago Tribune
Looking for Bloomingdale'sEventually we ended up stopping for lunch at a great Italian Restaurant on Rush Street.
Finally, after an exhausting afternoon of walking all over downtown, we headed back to the hotel to rest a bit before heading out for supper. One of the "must do" things on my list was to try the city's famous deep dish pizza and I had scouted out a restaurant on our way into the city for that very purpose. It was a pretty garish looking place on Ohio street, but I was encouraged by it's bold claim of being the "birthplace" of Chicago-style pizza. Our server advised us to get the small, but looking at the puny diameter of the pieplate that the staff had helpfully traced onto a poster and measuring my now considerable appetite, I scoffed at the very idea. We ordered a medium, and because we were told the pizza would take up to an hour to prepare, we got some cheezesticks to tide us over. Big mistake.
Forty minutes later, the pie arrived. I immediately understood why they called it a "pizza-pie" in those parts. More quiche-on steroids that pizza, it was three-inch deep concoction of mounds of cheeze, sauce and toppings in a real honest-to-goodness pie crust (yup, the kind made with shortening that Mom uses for apple and rhubarb pie). On top of that the crust was extra-thick. I balked, considering the irreparable damage I was about to do to my arteries. Nesrine looked revolted. Nevertheless, we tucked in, and an hour later, we staggered out of that restaurant/gastrointestinal-torture-chamber with aching bellies, having demolished barely half a piece each. We were anxious to put the ordeal behind us. My left arm began to ache on the way back to the hotel. In it, I cradled the remains of our pizza, approximately two-thirds of which was in pristine condition. The greasy cardboard box containing the leftovers of our meal weighed approximately twenty pounds. Nesrine eyed me curiously. "Wait til the old man tries a piece of this!" I said sadistically.
As it turned out, that was only a prelude to Friday's culinary adventures...
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