Holidays in the City
One of my favorite things about life in Chicago, and my neighborhood specifically (I live in Gold Coast), has been how elaborately everyone decorates for the holidays. Halloween in Gold Coast involved giant spiders repelling down a building, a witch animatronic stirring a pot, creepy ghost girls hidden in bushes and lots of pumpkins! Walking home from work was an adventure and I loved seeing so much attention paid to my favorite holiday.
Christmas has been just as great. Every walk up and apartment building used white lights to decorate in addition to real, living garland, beautiful bows and a few clever scenes of Santa delivering gifts.
Living garland hung on Dearborn in Gold Coast
Matt and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo to the "Adults Night Out: Holiday Edition" event, which featured hot wine, local beer, food and Christmas lights in addition to the animals. We had a lot of fun looking at the animals and walking around the gorgeous light displays! Matt snagged a pretty amazing shot of an adorable monkey:
Photo credit to Matthew Lu
A dark photo, but Matt and I outside the Zoo gates
Megan and I visited the Christkindlemarket in the Daley Plaza the first weekend it opened, after the Lights Festival Parade down Michigan Ave. It's a cute little German market with amazing food and crafts! The "thing to do" is to get a boot-shaped mug of hot spiced wine! It was so delicious, I went back with a new friend (from the Skimm'bassadors group) Tiffany, and then again with Matt!
Megan and I with our wine
The wine and mug
Santa in the parade
The CTA has been running both a Holiday Train and a Holiday Bus along certain public transit routes on certain days. I managed to catch it on the pink line at the Clinton stop into the Loop on my way home from work!! It's decorated elaborately inside and out, has carols playing, and even has a flat bed replacing a standar passenger car with Santa on a sleigh! I was so excited to have caught it! Below I have a photo of it I took from the ground after I disembarked.
The holiday train after disembarking at State and Lake
And finally (for now) I have a photo of myself in one of the free ugly Christmas sweaters Uber and Tipsy Elves were giving out through the Uber app last week! I was so excited to snag one! This past October I also snagged a free Halloween costume when they partnered with Snickers. I was really impressed--it's an actual, available-on-the-Tipsy-Elves-site sweater! It's heavy and substantial. Don't be surprised if you see pictures of me in it from Christmas morning! Mine's called the Ginga Ninja and has little Ninja Gingerbread men on it!
I have an adventure planned with Kate this weekend to see Star Wars and maybe do some shopping, so look for a post with more Christmas-y things soon!
--B