[Chicago, IL]

My bowling team, The Brew Crew, makes a trip annually at the end of bowling season to some poor unsuspecting city, where we take in a ballgame, and drink, and drink, and drink. This year was no exception, and the victim city this year was once again Chicago.

Originally, we had planned to go see the Cubs-Sox game on Saturday, but as I discovered yesterday, that was no longer the plan — tickets weren’t available. (Although the hotel staff was more than happy to set us up for $75 each for upper deck!) So, the plan this year was to revisit some of the haunts from last year, and try not to kill each other in the process.

The flight was good, and we hit The Tremont Hotel only to find out they didn’t take check-ins until 3 PM — it was only 11 AM. Being hungry, we walked down the street to a Mexican tequila bar, and began eating and drinking. And drinking. Did I mention that we drank? Many, many drinks later, and a little food, and we stumbled back down the street to The Tremont and got checked in. Nice place, though the rooms were teency.

We rested for a short bit, and decided to trek out to Gino’s for pizza, and off to the Underground Wonder Bar. Gino’s was good, as usual, but didn’t do much to sober us up!

The Wonder Bar was featuring Jen Porter as the lead up for Lonie Walker and Her Big Bad Ass Company Band (we saw them last year). Jen is really quite a good musician and pianist. I’m envious about the latter, given my scant two years of practice and learning to play! Needless to say, we had a good time grooving to the music and trying our best to still be functional enough to get to the hotel! 🙂