Chicago in January....BRRRRR!

In January of 2009 Lindsay and I were feeling the travelers itch. We didn't have a lot of time and our budget was small. I went online and of course found some great deals to Chicago...because who wants to go to Chicago in January. Anyway, we booked the tickets, grabbed a funky new hotel on Hotwire.com and were on our way. We arrived at O'Hare at took the "Blue line" train right into the city "the loop." Nothing would have prepared us for how it felt when we stepped out of the subway station. Chicago was going through an exceptional cold spell and it was about 7 degrees with a cold breeze coming off the lake. We immediately b-lined it for our hotel and couldn't help but notice that the Chicago River had COMPLETELY frozen over. Once we got to our hotel we immediately went and found a "deep dish pizza" joint to chow and get warmed up. Our hotel was right off Michigan Avenue (The Miracle Mile) so we spent the next few days just shopping like crazy. We also enjoyed as much of the architecture of Chicago as possible by walking the streets and even going up to the amazing observation deck of the John Hancock Tower. We were there on a Sunday afternoon and had managed to score tickets to the last showing of Wicked in Chicago (at least for a few years) and absolutely loved the show. Before we left we also hit up the Shed Aquarium, almost froze our fingers off helping a lady load a file cabinet in her minivan and purchased some Obama memorabilia! our last night we found an English pub to relax and reminisce about the last few days. Although it was freezing cold we absolutely loved our long weekend in Chicago in the middle of January!