My Kind of Town (Chicago Is) — Vacation Recap

Scott Hammel
Aug 23, 2017 · 11 min read
Time to get back to Wrigley

After the Cubs won the World Series last year, my brother and I decided that the following Summer would merit a return trip to Wrigley Field to see them play. I hadn’t been to Wrigley in about 9 years when Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano and Big Z were our greatest hope. I was definitely overdue. Myself, Grant and his wife Jessica decided to head there August 17th-21st to see a few games against the Blue Jays and then enjoy all that Chicago had to offer the rest of the time. Below is a recap of the trip. I had an absolute blast! Easily one of the best trips I’ve been on.

THURSDAY — Departure Day

Let’s give Spirit a try!

We flew out late Thursday morning heading to O’Hare. We took a chance and flew on Spirit airlines (more on this later) because the trip ended up being more expensive than we figured it would be. If we could save a few bucks on the flight to help out, then why not? We had rented a nice Airbnb apartment in Wrigleyville for the stay, and I had acquired decent seats for the 2 games we were going to. Those 2 things alone added up to a pretty hefty price tag.

Once we got off the plane, we decided to catch a Lyft from the airport which ended up being kind of a fiasco. Once you open the Lyft app, it detects that you’re at the airport and before you can book a driver, it tells you where to go to pick up your ride. All of the Lyft and Uber drivers have a set place at the airport to pick people up. We took an airport train, went down a few flights of stairs and ended up at the Lyft/Uber pen. I then booked our driver and the wait started. The great thing about these apps is that you can see where your driver is in real-time on the map. In this case it ended up being the most frustrating part. I could see our driver on the map circling the airport roads really nowhere near us at all. Finally he called and asked where I was? I said, “uhh, we’re where all the other Lyft and Uber passengers are being picked up.” The dude then started asking me about roads and terminals and the such. I don’t live here, shouldn’t he know this shit? Anyway, he finally found us and off we went…right in to non-moving traffic. We were stuck on the highway and had to basically just grin and bear it. We eventually got to the apartment which was incredible.

Once we got settled, it was off to explore the neighborhood and find something to eat for dinner. We made a quick stop at Walgreens to get some essentials first. Grant had seen a place on Diners, Drive In’s, and Dives which was only a few blocks away so that’s where we went to eat. The place was called BIG & Little’s and it was good! I had the spicy beef short rib taco and the Mexican beef short rib taco. Both were delicious.

We passed by Wrigley which was still being cleaned up from the game that happened earlier that day. Unfortunately, they lost so the L was flying but it still made a good shot.

Wrigley @ night

We then stopped off at Redmonds Ale House for a few drinks on the patio. After that, we headed back to the apartment and called it a day.

FRIDAY — Game Day #1

Grant was gracious enough to fire up some bacon, eggs and bagels for breakfast. We ate and then hung out before the game started. Opening pitch was 1:20pm so we left about an hour beforehand and stopped at Al’s Beef for a quick lunch bite. We received our lesson in wet vs. dry sandwiches and hot vs. not.

Al’s was not messing around

Once we entered the stadium we were pleased to see that our seats along the 1st base side were under the overhang so we got to sit in the shade all game. Mid 80’s combined with the humidity made it feel like a sauna so the shade was much appreciated.

Kris Bryant at bat
A view to the outfield

The Cubs got an early lead and looked to be cruising along. Then Pedro Strop entered the game and gave up a bunch of 2 out hits to get Toronto right back in to the game. Fortunately, Javy Baez homered in the bottom of the inning to pad the lead back out and we held on from there winning 7–4. The amount of Blue Jays fans that turned up was definitely surprising. They were everywhere! I guess the trip down from Toronto isn’t that long so it made sense.

After the game, we went back to the apartment to hang and come up with an idea for dinner. We decided that it would be the night for some deep dish pizza. We received a hot tip about a place called Pequod’s. It looked good so we jumped on the train and then took a bus the rest of the way. We had to wait for about 45 minutes for a table so we got a drink next door at the Whale Tale. Once we got seated, we kept our order pretty basic and ordered a large pepperoni. The wait was worth it. It was probably the best deep dish pizza I’ve ever had. The crust was crispy on the outside and the sauce was amazing. We couldn’t come anywhere close to finishing it. I ate so much that I seriously thought I wasn’t going to be able to walk home.

Pequod’s — named after the ship in Moby Dick

After dinner, we took the bus and train home and called it a night. We were all in food coma’s.

SATURDAY — Cruise and Beer Fest Day

A few months ago, Jessica had been researching some cool stuff for us to do during the down days we weren’t going to see the Cubs. She found a brunch cruise which in itself is pretty cool. But what made this one a little more special was that this brunch cruise also included a way to view the Chicago Air Show that was happening over the weekend. We woke up early and took the train downtown to the Navy Pier where our brunch yacht awaited us.

The Ol’ Spirit of Chicago

We loaded up and the yacht slowly drifted us out of the harbor and pointed us toward the airshow. We ate a pretty good brunch and then headed to the top of the boat (topside?) where we got to watch for about 30 minutes. I shot some video of a tandem team of planes that were doing some barrel rolls, and loops but it didn’t render that well so I’m not going to post it. The airshow was going all weekend so the 30 minutes we got to see was just a small snapshot of the event. It was pretty cool. The Blue Angels were the closing act on Sunday but more on that later. The boat then took us back ashore and that was it. We then walked around the pier for a little while longer.

Indoor fountain thingy
A ferris wheel

The next excursion for the day was to head out to suburb Oak Park for their annual craft beer festival. This entailed our longest train ride of the trip. We had to take the red line back south to downtown and then jump on the green line west to head out to the ‘burbs. It was an interesting ride. As we drifted west on the green line, the landscape outside started to change. We went through a really industrial part of Chicago and then a few stops after that, I won’t lie, it was looking kind of rough. Some of the apartment’s were abandoned or boarded up. It looked really run down and not uhh, safe. I started to get slightly nervous wondering where this beer fest was? 3 or so stops later, I saw the Whole Foods sign. That’s when I knew we were going to be alright. Nobody has ever been murdered at Whole Foods. Haha, our stop at Oak Park quickly revealed that there was nothing to be worried about. The festival was setup right off the train stop. Oak Park is the Highlands Ranch of Chicago, if you could imagine that sort of thing. The festival was absolutely incredible. Once you checked in, you were given a taster glass which you took to each tent to sample the goods.

Oak Park, IL — a fine city

It was more beer than any of us could drink but we gave it a valiant effort. After about 4 hours, we decided to head home for the day. We got back to the apartment and unwinded for the rest of the night watching Silicon Valley.

SUNDAY — Game Day #2 & ‘The Snake’

We woke up pretty late and eventually got it together enough to head out for some lunch before the game. We found a Mexican place that was completely empty. It was perfect. I had some enchilada’s and then we walked back to Wrigley. We had bleacher seats for this game which doesn’t have assigned seats so we wanted to claim some decent one’s before opening pitch. We got there about 45 minutes before the game started so we were able to secure good seats in left field. We would not have any shade for this game and man, it was a hot one. I sat there sweating my ass off. My shirt was soaked. Eventually some cloud cover came in and it was a huge help. Like I mentioned earlier, the Blue Angels were the headliner of the air show and we could see them performing while the game was going on. It was pretty nuts. One of them gave the stadium a nice fly over. It was so loud!

The Cubs got out to an early lead but Toronto battled back to tie it up. We stayed knotted up for a good portion of the middle to late innings. A friendly group of Toronto fans were sitting behind us and I noticed that he had a huge stack of empty beer cups in front of him. What the hell? Maybe he was collecting them? I asked and he laughed and said, “No, I’m starting a snake.” I had no clue what that meant. A ‘snake’ is when you get the biggest stack of empty cups you can and you pass it to a random person sitting near you. They then have to finish their beer as quick as possible and put their empty cup in the stack. Then all the people around them will add their cups and then they pass it to someone else, and on and on. They call it a snake because eventually the stack will get so big that it will start to bend. The goal is to keep the stack passing around so that the security guards can’t get to it to break it up. Our snake grew quickly.

snake starting up

It quickly grew and needed to be passed along. Then it broke!

Our snake broke before security came. However, over in the right field bleachers, their snake was impressive. I zoomed in as much as could without the picture getting too blurry. Theirs must’ve spanned 5 rows.

3–5 row snake

Security wore these really visible orange jackets so we could see one of them moving in on this monster. The security guard gave a karate chop on the snake and cups went flying. The whole stadium had been watching and the karate chop was met with 30,000 boo’s. It was hilarious.

Meanwhile, the actual baseball game had gone in to extra innings. The Blue Jays scored a few runs in the top of the 10th and the outcome was looking bleak. But in the bottom of the 10th the Cubs got a few runners on via wild pitches and the bases were loaded. Rookie Alex Avila came up with the clutch hit and the winning run rounded third with a close play at the plate. Javy Baez slid head first trying to avoid the tag of the catcher. For a split second, all eyes were on the umpire. He then emphatically made the ‘safe’ sign and the whole stadium went nuts! Cubs win! It was incredible!

Go Cubs Go
Fly the W

After the game we headed back to the apartment where I took a much needed shower. I had been dripping in sweat (and some beer) the entire game. We then decided to jump on the train and head down to the fancy Hancock Tower to get a drink on the 96th floor. Before we went to the tower, we had dinner at the Weber Grill restaurant. Everything is cooked over charcoal and it was damn tasty.

looking up from down on the street

We got to the tower and up to the lounge without having to wait at all. We ordered overly expensive drinks and took in the view. I’m not the greatest with heights, but I had no problem walking up to the window to get a few shots.

The view straight out
The view looking down. I want to swim in that rooftop pool!

We took the bullet elevator back down to the ground level and hopped on a bus that took us back to our apartment. We then were able to get HBO on the TV and watched the Game of Thrones episode to finish the night off.

MONDAY — Departure Day and a Missed Eclipse

We got all packed up Monday morning and took a bus to the blue line and then took that to O’Hare. With the eclipse happening, I hoped that their may be some chance that we could see it from the plane on the way home. That didn’t happen. We flew in clouds most of the flight and I didn’t even have a window seat. I was slightly bummed out about it, but then again the trip was so incredible, I’m sure I’ll get over it haha!

I give Spirit airlines a C+ grade. The flight was cheap, was on-time both to and from Chicago so it did it’s job. The seats are the most cramped I’ve ever sat in. In the future, I’ll stick with Southwest since they aren’t that much more expensive.

Anyway, the trip was incredible. We got to do so many cool things. We rarely had any down time which was awesome. My favorite thing was the Sunday Cubs comeback win but the beer festival in Oak Park comes in a close second. My favorite meal was the pizza. So much fun.

)
Scott Hammel

Written by

Storm Photographer from Colorado

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade