Can you feel the Illinoise? Last night I got back from my trip to Chicago. Ryan was moderating a panel at Northwestern’s Kellogg Tech Conference and I decided to tag along. Poor thing, he had to work the 9-5 while I was out and about every day.

Favorite moments from my trip:

-Wandering around for hours everyday, just marveling at the architecture.

-Riding around on the El. I loved feeling like I was on a roller coaster throughout the city.

-Meeting up with Drew, an old friend from San Francisco. He was as wonderful as ever, and as crankety as ever. It was just so nice to see him, and to know that good people like him are around in the world. I love having friends that inspire and amuse me.

-Having late night drinks at the Drake Hotel, a fancy local institution where Cary Grant used to live! Unfortunately I was a little bit too drunk to appreciate it at that point, but it was lovely being there.

-Seeing Max Raabe and Palast Orchester at the Chicago Symphony. They’re still on top of their game.

-Eyeballing the hipsters in Wicker Park and thinking “This is it?”

-Taking 10 minutes to photograph a mummified rodent- with three different cameras!

-Eating many fantastic meals- great food city.

Every time I travel I wonder, could I live here? Over the years I’ve realized that I prefer smaller sized, walkable, vaguely European cities. For example, in my travels I’ve preferred Montreal over Toronto and Madrid over Barcelona. And after college I chose to move to San Francisco over New York. While I was in Chicago, I felt the largeness of the city. All the while, it still felt entirely comfortable and doable. Could I live in Chicago? It is a maybe, which is pretty good, considering how picky I am!

Here are some photos from my trip. Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the picture.

The rest of my trip to Austin, in pictures.

For breakfast on the last full day of our trip, we went to Juan in a Million. Little did I know that this place had been featured on Man Vs. Food!

I accidentally ordered Juan’s special breakfast taco- the equivalent of like 5 tacos. Surprise! Great value for less than 4 bucks. Each special taco includes: 1 entire potato, 2 eggs, cheese, bacon, etc. Jeez.

This is what the normal breakfast tacos look like, for comparison.

Afterwards we spent the afternoon swimming at Barton Springs, a natural springs converted to a swimming hole. It was beautiful and peaceful.

Great stuff, and the pool was topless friendly, not that many women cared to go without.

After lazing at the pool for a few hours, it was off to the Salt Lick, a famous barbecue joint about 40 minutes out of town. This was Ryan’s design, as you might imagine. I was at this point feeling incredibly out of sorts due to the food I was eating, and barbecue felt… like just asking for pain. Did I mention that this place was ALSO on Man vs. Food? Jeeeeeeeeeeez.

This was my attempt at a “light” meal, LOL. Turkey, ribs, and sausage.

Ryan was very pleased.

We met up with a friend of Ryan’s and headed down to the water to check out the Austin bats! They’re Mexican bats that come up from  March- early fall, and during this time they live underneath the Congress bridge, coming out around dusk for food. We came early and waited for so long that we decided to leave if they didn’t come by 8pm. At 8pm as if on cue, a few critters started fluttering out, so of course we had to stay. I wasn’t able to get any great photos of them, but good video can be found on Youtube.

Willie Nelson Boulevard

Our last full night ended with barhopping. First fine and fancy drinks at the historic Driskill followed by  beers at the Lustre Pearl. Perfection!