My Kind of Town

First and foremost: if you are at all a baseball fan, you are going to want to spend an afternoon at Wrigley Field. Friday afternoons are usually the liveliest, as half the city seems to play hooky. Night games are still rare at the Friendly Confines, and are also fun, but for the true experience, you need to make sure you go to a day game.

The Field Museum is currently quite popular, thanks to Sue (a very complete tyrannosaur skeleton). Also, the aquarium/oceanarium (adjacent to Field) is a lot of fun.

In the evenings, there are numerous good neighborhoods in which to party. Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville are always common, but I also enjoy the more out of the way places, such as the smaller Italian neighborhood near UIC.

Quick Tips:

For some museums, you will encounter a line to enter. If this is the case, and you are in a group of 2 to 4 people, consider buying a membership to the museum. Usually there is no line to do this. Weighing the costs, you might find that it's not much more to join the museum, especially if your group wants to see special exhibits. For example: at the Field Museum, admission plus all special exhibits can sometimes run or so per person. Out-of-state Museum membership costs for 1 year, and includes two free passes to everything, with discounts on additional passes. If the wait to buy tickets significant at all, you might as well go to the "Member's Only" area and sign up. We did this five years ago at the Field Museum to avoid a line, and we're still hooked...

Other museums have "suggested" admission fees (i.e., donations). I usually give the suggested fee - or a dollar or two more - but I suppose you could theoretically get in for less (i.e., the Art Institute).

Best Way To Get Around:

If you are spending time in Chicago proper, you will be able to use trains to get to most places. A rental car is only necessary if you are going to be based in the suburbs. Traffic to/from the airport can be absolutely brutal at times, and driving in the city requires a great deal of local knowledge.

The Blue Line from ORD takes you right downtown. Cabs are everywhere in Chicago, and even locals use them on a regular basis as a primary means of transportation. You should do so too if the trains aren't convenient - you needn't be afraid of Chicago cabbies; most of them are quite friendly, and the cab prices are standard and straightforward. Some cabs do NOT take plastic, so have cash on hand.

Whenever I visit Chicago, I try to stay in one of the HHonors properties in the Magnificent Mile area. Usually, I wind up at the Palmer House, simply because I have better luck getting weekend/Internet rates there than I do at the Towers or Drake properties.

Palmer House is a great four-star hotel. There are about five restaurants/bars in the hotel, ranging from a steakhouse to a Trader''s Vics to a cigar bar. The lobby of this hotel is large and very beautiful.

HHonors Gold and higher get rooms on a very nice Executive Level. If the level is sold out with paying customers, you will get access to the level with a special Gold key. HHonors check-in is separate from the main hotel check-in, and the staff are very knowledgeable. Breakfast and evening appetizers are complimentary on the Executive Level. A staffed bar is also available during the afternoon/evening. An Executive Level concierge is also available throughout the day. (This hotel definitely takes good care of its frequent guests!)

The rooms themselves actually vary quite a bit in terms of size and configuration, but all of the ones I''ve stayed in have been very nice and roomy. Only thing to watch out for: the double beds used in some of the rooms are smaller and shorter than I would expect. (The King beds are typical; just the doubles seem to be undersized.)

I usually book this one online and get good rates. I''ve never finagled with local reservations for a lower rate, but that''s always worth a shot if the ''Net isn''t hooking you up. Palmer House has shown up as an Expedia special rate, and it tends to show up in various airline "Netsavers" emails, so www.hilton.com might not always have the lowest rate.

This is one of Chicago''s largest hotels - something like 2000 rooms. It is a typical huge convention hotel. Nothing great, but not too bad either.

At check-in, the front desk was overwhelmed with people checking in for the weekend (we were there Friday at 4PM). For some unexplained reason, nobody was using the Gold Passport line, so we checked-in there. The GP rep upgraded us to the "club" floor and had us on our way to the room in under 5 minutes.

Note: Anybody can join Gold Passport for free online. Using the GP line at this hotel does not require elite status of any kind. You can still opt for FF miles instead of GP points for your stay. No guarantees on the upgrade...it wasn''t a "big" upgrade anyway.

The rooms themselves are typical Hyatt - nice and clean, albeit a bit small at this property. Our room happened to overlook another tall building, so our room was always a bit dark. If light is important to you, ask for something overlooking a different direction.

There are a couple of bars and restaurants in the hotel, although we didn''t eat there at all. Just a couple of drinks in the lobby...

Stuff nearby: Chicago River cruises depart 2 blocks away from the hotel. A 9-hole golf course is a block away (looks like all par 3''s to me). The lake is 3 blocks away and Michigan Avenue is about 2 blocks away. Great location.

When I travel to Chicago, I don''t go out of my way for this hotel. I prefer the two big HHonors hotels down the street (Hilton on Mich Ave and the Palmer House). But this Hyatt beat everyone else''s rates by $50/night when we were there, and I wouldn''t hesitate to take advantage of a good deal again.

Cafe Iberico is a very fun tapas bar in downtown Chicago. It's on La Salle...about 700 or 800 North, as I recall. That price range for food is not a typo - you can eat dinner for less than $20 a head at this place, yet it's good food, and a very exciting format.

For those who have never eaten tapas before, you simply order a wide variety of small plates for $4-$7 per plate. The whole table shares each appetizer-sized portion. You can order a bunch of plates at one time, or you can order a few at a time and eat at a slow pace. Some people like to order cold plates first, followed by hot plates later.

The restaurant serves a wide variety of dishes in this manner - salads, cold meats, vegetarians entrees, potato dishes, and pitas/dips in the lighter side. Then heavier chicken and beef dishes as well. Basically, anything you can think of - they have on the menu.

The food is NOT overly spicy, with the exception of a few (specifically-noted) dishes.

The beverage of choice for tapas is sangria, the fruity spanish wine drink. You can order pitchers of red or white sangria for your table. (Of course, they have a full bar and a pretty good wine list, as well.)

The atmosphere is pretty lively. Not a quiet romantic place at all. I enjoy tapas bars in groups of 4 at a minimum - ideally 6 or 8. Reservations are almost mandatory for groups over 6, but we were able to get in early (Spanish food is a "late" thing). A bigger party allows you to select a wide variety of dishes and wines/sangrias. Very fun...

And when it was all said and done, we were amazed at how inexpensive the dinner was. You'd have to go pretty far out on a limb to get above $16-18 per person. Even the drinks were priced competitively compared to Chicago bars in general.

Over the years, I've spent many, many afternoons at Wrigley Field. This is one of the highlights of any Chicago trip; obviously, the baseball schedule will determine whether or not you have an opportunity to attend a game.

Most games start at 1.20pm. Some start later. The best way to kick off a day in Wrigleyville is to arrive early and preparty in the neighborhood. The stadium is practically surrounded by bars and restaurants. The Cubbybear is probably the most famous, but it's also the most touristy. On game day, a can of Miller Lite will be four or five bucks. Go a block away to Texas Star Fajita Bar for some decent Tex-Mex. On Sheffield (beyond the right field wall) there are two bars: Murphy's and the Sports Corner. Both are good places to primer.

If you have the prized bleacher seats, you might want to enter the gates early (at least 1 hour before game time) if you actually want a decent seat. On hot days in the summer, the most comfortable "seat" is to simply stand against the chain-link fence in right or left field, behind the seating area. You're simply a few feet farther away from the field, and you get a decent breeze.

Stick around through at least the seventh inning - sometimes someone halfway famous will sing. I've seen Jimmy Buffett do the seventh-inning stretch in the past. If anyone halfway cool is in town for a concert, there's a decent chance they'll sing at Wrigley. Always fun to see who it will be (just hope it's not Da Coach).

After the game, postparty in the neighborhood or walk a couple blocks away for any one of the good restaurants in the area. Sheffield's in a fun place...a few blocks south on Sheffield.

Note about tickets: Bleacher tickets can be hard to get, especially if a division rival is in town or if there's a good pitching matchup (i.e., Kerry Wood vs. Anybody). In fact, bleacher seats to almost all of the premium games sell out before the season even starts. If you are serious about attending a Cubs game, try to line up your tickets ahead of time, either by buying them the day the go on sale (in Feb. 2002), picking one of the rare games with tickets will available (Marlins, etc.), or get seats to the game you want via an online broker (at a premium, of course). If you really want to experience Wrigley, I would definitely advise getting into the bleachers, but I would not advise relying on the (semi-illegal) scalping scene on game day to get your tickets. It can be done, but if you show up on a Friday and it happens to be Wood vs. the Unit, you will be watching the game from Murphy's. The bleachers may not be suitable for young children, as it can be quite a debaucherous and well-hydrated crowd.