But this time in-person. Cookie decorating with my family, Christmas Eve with both (e:Paul) and my family and then hosting (e:Paul)'s relatives for a big famy party.

A lil late but (e:):terry and I whipped up hundreds of Christmas cookies to deliver.

I scoop cookies small so we had a lot of plates. Scotchies, ginger snaps, raspberry thumbprint, chocolate chip and Italian ricotta cookies. Almost all delivered by bike, with (e:Paul) too!

(e:paul) left before us so (e:terry) and I had one more day before our train left at night.

Turns out in a big city you need to plan your day in advance, because a lot of things we wanted to do needed to be reserved.

We did manage to find a tasty Kurdish breakfast. Tofu scramble, fresh bread and a lot of dips. It was called The Gundi's on North Clark.


A lot of L rides and walking around. We tried to go to the free Lincoln Park botanical garden but they required tickets in advance.


Kept on walking around through the old town and eventually took the train back downtown. I showed Terry the crazy beautiful dome in the Chicago Cultural Center and the 7 story Macy's.





A quick stop in Boystown before we left, a last dish to eat some mediocre deep dish, and we were on the Amtrak back, heavy unicycles included.

Chicago is pretty amazing, I definitely think I could live there.

Saturday we spent the time with (e:terry)'s family going out to the Field Museum. It has to be the largest science and natural history museum I've ever seen, in a huge stone building near the lakefront.

We were there for about 5 hours and saw 5 exhibits:
1. A Monsanto sponsored exhibit on soil ecosystems
2. An 3D movie about a Titanosaur, the mind boggling fossil they had in their atrium
3. A lame exhibit about color in nature - basically they had a bunch of taxidermied animals and some plants grouped by color
4. An exhibit about the evolution of life on Earth
5. An exhibit about Chinese history

The evolution of life exhibit always makes me go nuts. The billions of years it took life to appear and evolve to basic life forms, mass extinctions and evolution again, all summed up in tiny exhibits, always makes humanity feel like such a blip.






Later Paul slept while (e:terry) and I gaybared. We met a ton of people and went from SoFo lounge, to Touche, to Cellblock.

SoFo was like Ohm with a big patio and kind of bear crowd, Touche was a kink/old man leather bar, and Cellblock is also sort of a kink bar (you can get your drink in a dog bowl).

Friday we spent the day wandering some more. We took the blue line to WIcker Park with the intention of visiting Humboldt and Garfield Park.

First we ate at a delicious veggie restaurant called Handlebar. The vegan chimmichanga (e:terry) ordered was so good.

Then we walked over to Humboldt Park which to be honest was nothing special.

We kept wandering south down to Garfield Park, where there is a free botanical garden. Later I found out from a Chicago native that if there's a neighborhood tourists shouldn't be wandering this would be it. We had no issue though.

The Garfield Park botanical garden is amazingly tall and free. Like most of the plants have probably three times the height to grow versus Buffalo's.

The garden was designed to be less potted plants and more of a natural setting than other gardens. Supposedly there is no floor, just Chicago's dirt underneath the beds. The fern room had a rushing brook and waterfall, and cactus room was beautiful. I'd visit a lot here if I lived here.








Wandering to Boystown that night we came across a store exclusively for rabbit related things. They even boarded rabbits and had social groups for them. I thought (e:robert) would appreciate it.