Chicago Exploring Day 1 by Kenny

Kristen was working in the suburbs for the week, so before heading into the city, we did a little bit of food exploring in Arlington Heights. The highlight of which by far was the little ice cream place called Capannari's... they had ice cream flights! 4 mini scoops of different flavors of ice cream for $5! It was magical. AND they had an awesome butterfly garden to relax in while you ate. I literally had 3 different butterflies land on me while I was eating. Thanks to our friend Maria for showing us around!  As the weekend started, Kristen and I hopped on over to the Metra station and grabbed a couple tickets to downtown Chicago. This was a bit tricky as no one was working at the train station - but we downloaded an app, bought tickets, and the next thing we knew we were in downtown Chicago!  Now, I have never been to Chicago before, but I'll tell you my first impression - it was nicer than I thought. In my head I thought it would be like New York City a bit. Tall buildings, no sun, tons of traffic. And while some of that is true, the streets were nice and wide, plenty of sun was coming in, and the sidewalks were huge - there was plenty of pedestrian room. They even had some massive bike lanes. I was thinking this place has a handle on things!  Since we got in kind of late, we didn't have a lot of plans - mostly, get to our hotel, get some dinner, get some sleep. So we browsed for a cool place to eat and settled on Ramen-San. This was a pretty good restaurant and in Kristen's terms "Tied for the top spot" (it was good though and is in my top 3). After dinner we headed back to our hotel ( which, long story short, took us three tries to find because there are so many Hilton Garden inns and I let Kristen be in charge of directions) to get some sleep. 

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