Discovering the south of Chicago!!

On Sunday, I had a pretty cool day, I explore the south part of the city with Camilo. He showed me some really cool stuff: museums, universities, parks, beaches, markets, dinners, neighborhoods etc. Here are some pictures!!

New Maxwell Street Market



ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

This is the awesome building of the McCormick Tribune campus Center, design by the Dutch architect: Rem Koolhaas.







MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY



The amazing building of this museum is the only one surviving building from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition.

Cali & Seattle!!

Yesterday, I got back from a really cool and long weekend. On Saturday, very early in the morning, I flew to Orange County, California. Where Paola was waiting for me. It was GREAT to see her again!! We spent the afternoon at bills place, who’s a good friend of hers. We had a lot of fun, food and alcohol… On the way to his house we stopped at Balboa Island, which is a very beautiful place, with awesome houses.



On Sunday we spent most of the day packing and she showed me a lot of stuff in Long Beach. We went shopping and bought the Fuck Off T-shirts


and wore them at night to go out, I never in my life heard more compliments about any other thing that I’ve ever wore before.




Monday was GREAT. Paola, who is a pilot, took me flying over the coast, it was so cool and I was so proud of her!!


Then she dropped me off at some mall with Bill who took me to Huntington Beach (famous place for surfers) we had some cocktails and then Julian, my cousin, picked me up and took me shopping to South Coast Plaza, which is a gigantic and really cool mall. It was GREAT to see him too!!



On Tuesday super early, Paola and I went to Seattle, AWESOME city. It reminded me of Hamburg. We saw a lot of cool stuff: the Pike Place Market, the pier, the space needle, the first StarBucks, and even a
Juan Valdez coffee Place. We walked the entire day and had a lot of “girly” fun… we also discover that just like Kurt Cobain most of the men in Seattle are SO good looking that it seems unreal. Seattle is the place on the world where I have seen the best-looking men in my life. They all have some sort of grunge style that makes them unique and ridiculously handsome. We went shopping until late at night, finally we had dinner at Belltown Pizza, which was a recommendation of lonely planet and was VERY good.


I really had an unforgettable time!! :)
Click HERE to see more cool pics!!

Greek Town and the lamb's head!!

This past Monday after a sushi hunting tour at 11 pm and discovering that the Japanese go to bed early, I finally went to Greek town, for a late dinner with Camilo and ray. It is a very nice area of the city, with a beautiful view of the skyline, full of restaurants and nightlife, meaning, everything was open at 11:30pm on a Monday!We went to a cool restaurant called Parthenon, where I tried and liked a very good calamari with some kind of garlicky sauce. Camilo ate a baked lamb’s head, with eyes, brain and everything inside. That was kinda weird, but he was enjoying it SO much, that I couldn’t feel disgusted, because he was making it look like something really delicious. I actually tried a little piece of meet from what would be the chick of the lamb. Ray ate sweetbreads, which are the thymus glands of the lamb, but those looked very normal.The people who know me long ago, understand and know that the Ingrid 7 years ago, would have fainted on the table, but I’ve changed and even if I don’t feel like ordering the same strange kind of food, I absolutely enjoy different and new experiences.as always, we had a great time!

Chicago, this time from the river!!

Yesterday, Chris and I took an architectural boat tour, to see from the water the very different styles of the buildings in Chicago.
It was a very nice experience; the tour guide was an old woman with a lot of knowledge, it was interesting to listen to her, she reminded me a lot of my geography teacher back in high school, who was my favorite teacher ever!



Chicago is an amazing city with a lot of interesting history; the thing is that Americans often don’t know anything about it, which is very sad.




It was weird to hang out with Chris again, but we really had a good time and a delicious lunch in Chinatown. This tour, was something we wanted to do long ago, before all the big problems started, so it was fun that after all we could experience it together.

Memories of Berlin.

I miss the past, my friends and what we used to do!

El Mole!!

Last night, I went to a wonderful dinner party at Gadi’s and Sonias house. It was GREAT, they made this awesome mole poblano, with tortillas and aguacate and we ate all together, which reminded me of all the dinner parties that we had in Berlin.

It is so nice to get together with friends, cook all together and then enjoy…it was also fun to discover that in Mexico they also have arequipe and bocadillo de guayaba, but they call it different. They also have a different name for the aguacates, but my memory isn’t good enough, so I didn’t learn the new words. After dinner, the boys gave us a very nice soccer show.
I had a lot of fun!!!

LOLLAPALOOZA!!

The past weekend was just…. No words to describe it!!
lollapalooza in grant park Chicago!! It was awesome!! The truth is that there were many bands that I didn’t know about, but the big ones for me like Manu Chao and Red Hot Chili Peppers were just GREAT.
On Saturday, we started the party kinda early, drinking Absolut as if it was water,

here we can see Helen on State Av, mixing our drinks without any kind of shame while Leila tells her that she could go to jail for doing this in the U.S. but Helen didn't give a shit, she is German… so she is used to drinking in the streets as well! After the first bottle and being VERY happy and sociable already, we got in to the festival for FREE!! First we asked in the main entrance how to get in for less money, but it didn’t work, so I asked a girl on the fens if she could let us in and she just opened that gate and the rest was PARTY!!

We had a great time, the concert was incredibly good, I was amazed by the excellent quality of the sound, because it was happening in an outdoor and very big space. Manu Chao, with all his energy and singing all the old stuff, made me jump as if I was still 15, when I first heard Mano Negra and loved them since.

We met a lot of people, everyone was so friendly and the energy was high.

On Sunday, kind of hangover and with not so much energy, we got to grant park and with the same strategy and after finding the same girl, this time not 4, but 5 people got in through the fens. It didn’t take long, until we were again jumping and singing like crazy with one of the most awesome bands I’ve ever seen in concert.


The closure of the festival with the Chili peppers was more than I was expecting, not only did they play a lot of the good stuff, but in concert, one can really appreciate the excellent musicians that they are. At the end of the concert, walking the streets of Chicago with other 70.000 people as happy and exited as I was, was a great experience as well.

Finally and as a “good bye” dinner for Helen, who returned to Berlin on Monday, we went for a tapas dinner to Café Iberico, a VERY Spanish joint, so Spanish that one can smoke all over the place without any problem, just like in any place in Spain. The food was delicious and the most important, it really tasted Spanish, it wasn’t an Americanized kind of stuff. I highly recommend the restaurant and specially the queso de cabra.

Mickey's Birthday

Yesterday was Mickey’s (kids grandma’s) birthday. I made her a flower bouquet and run out at 5:30 am to Starbucks to get her fresh blueberry scones for breakfast.
She was very happy and very impressed. It’s amazing how happy it makes me to do this kind of stuff for other people. My job could easily be to create “surprises” for everyone and make it happen. The kids were happy too, which made me feel even better!!

At night I got together with Leila, Camilo and Hector and went to this DELICIOUS Argentinean restaurant called: el Nandu, where we had empanadas and chimichurri and Leila finally tried the arequipe. Yesterday in Chicago we had the most beautiful thunderstorm, so we decided to get wet and we definitely had a GREAT time!!

King Tut.

Yesterday I went to see the king Tut exhibition at the Field Museum. The exhibition was awesome, so much stuff to think about… to much perfection for such an old thing. It was really impressive, I’m glad I saw it and I certainly recommend it.
The museum it self is very impressive as well, the building is beautiful, I really had a good time.
My attention was caught by the Mc Donald’s located in the bottom floor of the museum and a enormous room with at least 25 vending machines by its side. While in the 2nd floor they teach the kids about culture, nature, vegetables and fruits in the different parts of the world... in the bottom floor they feed them with happy meals??? ONLY IN AMERICA!!!