Honeymoon, Day I, Sorry for the Delay!

So.... we've been a little slack on this whole blogging thing, but it's our honeymoon... right?


RIGHT!

And it's been awesome, amazing, spectacular, and really, really great so far.

Thank you. 

First up, we wanna thank Bobby & Kim, & Ricky for having us in SoCal, and for the excellent times we had. We're only regretting not taking Winston on our honeymoon a little bit. We really liked all the sushi, seeing KSHMR, Mimosa brunch, breweries, Bobby's Tacolicous cooking and chilling with Ferrari and Darren and Newport Beach adventures!

P.S. We miss Winston (Bobby & Kim's Dog).

Right now we're sitting in our honeymoon suite in Glenwood Springs, it's snowing, and we're about to go chill out in the Hot Springs. HI THURSDAY!

There have been some ups and downs, but mostly ups. Downs include: ... well... not much, actually. It's been a little hot? I guess?  And some other Non-honeymoon stuff that bares no mentioning here in Honeymoon town!

So, here's the ups so far, day by day.




Day 1, Badass Honeymoon Train-Trip


We did it!  We survived LA with Ricky, and Irvine with Bobby & Kim, and it was spectacular!  We left from LAX to Chicago on our flight and we were ready to start our Chicago to San Francisco Badass Train-Trippin' Honeymoon!

We arrived at the airport and were lucky enough to have some lounge passes so that we could go into the United Airlines Lounge, which was pretty awesome!  We had a few drinks there while organizing things that needed organizing and Conor had an amazing salad.  It was at this point we realized that our red-eye flight to Chicago was actually only 3 hours and 45 minutes.  We were a bit bummed that we weren't going to be able to get any real sleep on the flight but decided it would be alright anyway.

We ended up getting into Chicago at about 5am, almost an hour early, and took an Uber straight to our hotel.  We got to our hotel around 6am, and by the luck of honeymoon, or maybe chance, we were allowed to check in!

We took a nap, and got a call from reception that a new room was ready for us with a lake view!  We switched our rooms, checked out our new view and started our journey into Chicago!

We left our hotel and started walking down towards the river and started marveling at the amazing architecture in Chicago, it was simply amazing.  We walked down and checked out The Bean, Millennium Park, and the fountain at the beginning of Married with Children.  We loved everything so far, but would downtown Chicago hold up to our expectations?

We started walking downtown, and from a recommendation from Kim, decided we needed to find some Garrett Popcorn, which was absolutely worth the mini-journey, and delicious.  We walked a bit further and went into the Burlington Coat Factory (one of Conor's favorites) and bought a scarf for the chilly Chicago weather.  We kept walking up and saw the Chicago sign, which we were both pretty excited for.  We crossed the river going back to the north side, and pointed out some apartments we thought might be amazing to live in, (We ended up finding rents on the 46th floor with a balcony as low as $1,400, which, coming from San Francisco, was a pretty welcome change).

We left from there, and after deciding that 20 minutes wasn't enough time to make it to the stadium to see a Chicago Bulls game, went to Lou Malnati's for pizza (Thanks to Bobby for the recommendation!).  For the first time in our lives, deep dish won.  Seriously, this place was absolutely amazing.  Definitely worth checking out.

As we walked back from Lou's we tried to find somewhere that might know something about Australia day celebrations the next day, generally didn't find anything, other than some friendly people that were more than willing to make a few searches for us.

After that we walked up The Magnificent Mile and checked out all the schmancy shops and the Old Chicago Water Tower.  At that point, it was snowing pretty hard, and we decided to go into the Hancock Building to go up to the bar on the 96th floor!

After the security guard finished gossiping/loving Ryan's colorful hat, we went up for a drink, and saw an insane snowstorm hitting us on the 96th floor, it was perfect!

On our way out we found a Cupcake ATM, and figured, why not?  So after our cupcake vending mach-I mean, ATM, we finally went down and went to the Viagra Triangle area (Rush Street) and had a quick drink at an Irish Bar.  Pretty sweet, but we didn't really get a feel for why it was called the Viagra Triangle, which, honestly, was probably a good thing.

After a quick walk back home, we decided to search for a "Chicago"-movie to watch, and ended on the Dark Knight, which was really cool to see all the same buildings we had just explored.  And for the end of the night, well, its our honeymoon, so give us some privacy already!

More posts to come soon.

Probably.

Honeymoon Day II, Exploring Chicago!

So we woke up today and decided we would get a couple of things handled (including booking the very last night of our trip in San Francisco!)

After that, we decided that it was time that we checked out Navy Pier.  Conor was particularly excited because it's supposed to be Chicago's biggest tourist traps, and for whatever reason, she loves tourist traps. Navy Pier was cool, albeit a little weird and empty in the winter.  We both imagined in the Summer that it would be a pretty active place.

We decided to swing by Shake Shack on our way back to the room and get some delicious burgers and a couple of beers to start the day off right!  If you haven't had Shake Shack before, what are you doing, you should, it's amazing.

On the way back to our hotel room, we picked up a bottle of Yellowtail wine to celebrate because today was Australia Day!

So naturally, we throw on Triple J's Hottest 100, eat some Maltesers, and had some wine in our room while enjoying our view of Lake Michigan.  After that, Conor's dad was nice enough to buy us tickets to go to the top of the Sears Tower for Christmas!  For those that don't know, the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world (108 floors!) for nearly 25 years, and is still the tallest building in the United States (not including antenna's).

We got our Uber to the Sears Tower and took the elevators all the way to the top, with our ears popping a tremendous amount.  When we got out we could see an amazing view of Lake Michigan, The Hancock Building, and all of Chicago.  There was even a place where you could go stand off the side of the building with a glass floor.  I (Ryan) kept jumping on it as hard as I could, Conor was not so impressed.  After that, and after someone gave Conor a sweet keyring, we left there and decided to go to the Art Institute.

Luckily, there was a pedi-cab right outside, who said that $13 would be fine to take us to the Art Institute.  As it was lightly snowing at this point, and since we both had always wanted to take a pedi-cab, we decided we should do it!  Our pedi-cab driver was super nice, and really helped us understand a bit more about the city, including some architecture tidbits and cool filming locations we might have seen from movies, like the City Hall in The Dark Knight!

Once we got to the Art Institute we started taking a look around. We arrived there a bit late, and I am not the most knowledgable about art, so we would need to get on track fast!  Luckily, we took some screen shots from Ferris Bueler's Day Off of when they went to the Art Institute, so we could at least make sure we saw some of those (and maybe make some funny posed pictures like in the movie).

It wasn't long before we understood why the Art Institute has such a reputation for being an amazing museum.  Conor's top three Art Museum's are now: The Guggenheim in Bilbao, MONA in Hobart, and The Art Institute in Chicago. It's spectacular. We could have spent hours there, and there was just so much to see and love. We saw amazing paintings by Dali, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Magritte, Renoir, and so many more; a truly priceless collection of art.

We were pretty exhausted after the Art Institute so we decided to head back to our hotel, grab some Uber Eats, watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off (naturally) and Skype Party with Colin for a little bit.

After talking with Colin for a bit, we got our second wind and decided we should probably go out!  We went out searching for Billy Goats Tavern, in hopes of learning more about the recently broken Curse of the Billy Goat, but for some reason, we just couldn't make sense of the address (turns out the location we were going to was below ground level).

After a little bit we found a really cool area near downtown to have some local beers before making the trek back to our hotel for the night.

All in all, a day very well spent!

Day III : Fancy Suites, Sixteen, The Second City & Old Town

Today was Awesome.

We woke up this morning to a pretty awesome call.  Our room had been upgraded to a suite overlooking Lake Michigan!  All we had to do was go down and pick up the keys and we could switch rooms whenever we wanted.  Needless to say we were pretty stoked about the upgraded room.

After we switched our rooms, we realized we were already a little bit late for a lunch reservation we'd decided to splurge on spontaneously the day before, so we rushed over to 'Sixteen'.

Sixteen was rad, despite it's location.

We had their prix fixe meal, which was an exceedingly and surprisingly excellent deal at $39 each. Conor had been looking up the best restaurant for us to go to for the last few days, and saw this one with two Michelin Stars and thought it would be the best option.

It was.

It was absolutely incredible.  Amazing views of Chicago, an absolutely exquisite Risotto (with some crazy gold flakes in it), wonderfully cooked Lamb Shank, and a ridiculously fancy Mango-Chocolate Mousse dessert that they chocolate'd up to say 'Congratulations' when they learnt it was our honeymoon. We also got free drinks! Score.

It was fantastic.  Highly recommended.

We came back to our room afterwards and had a quick rest before heading out to another huge highlight of the trip, The Second City, a comedy show that Chicago is known for.  The Second City has been the starting step for many huge comedians like Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, just to name a few.

It's also just the funniest collection of ideas, improvisations and characters that's ever existed, probably.

At the beginning of the show, they had us write down a quick thing "What is something odd that happened to you this week?"  We had actually had a pretty odd experience in the last week, when Conor's Mum had a snake in her kitchen in the last week hiding under the fridge and had called us for some help.  We decided to include a statement about that as our "odd thing".  Before long, they had actually read it out-

"Did I even tell you about when my Mum called me from Australia and asked what she should do with the deadly snake under the fridge?" "I told her, 'Well cook it! On the Bar-Bee!"

It was an absolutely wild, and fantastic show.

After Second City finished up, we went out to Old Town Chicago for some drinks at The Fireplace Inn and then on to Woody's after a recommendation from our friend Shelley (Thanks Shelley!).  After a few too many Pabst's, we decided to head home and get some UberEats (of course).

Another solid night in the books!

Day IV: The L, Rocks Lakeview, The Country Club & Party-time with Shelley!

Today was... also awesome. We caught up with Shelley!

Well, we woke up today, and decided that our plans to go out early to brunch with Shelley might need to be a little bit delayed.  After we got finally ready, we went out for our first ride on the "L" (the train system in Chicago).

We got off at the Addison stop so that we could check out Wrigley Field and Wrigleyville.  There was quite a bit of construction going on, so we decided to take a quick stroll around the outside of the stadium.  It was very clear that this neighborhood was dominated by the presence of the newly crowned world series champions, the Chicago Cubs.  Nearly every window had a "W" in their window, showing their support for the team.

Right when we thought that we had been all through Wrigleyville, (and had assumed that since it was off-season and winter, there wasn't going to be too much going on), we found Clark Street, and were quickly proven wrong.  It was not only active, but it was bumpin'!

After sufficiently taking a look at Wrigleyville, we decided to head down to Rocks Lakeview, where we had planned on meeting up with Shelley.  It wasn't long before we got into the neighborhood, and on the way we saw some amazing deals on rent (at least, coming from a SF perspective), with rents as low as $700 for a studio!

Then... we finally saw Shelley!  She gave us a huge hug, and the night had begun!  After some mimosas and food, meeting some of Shelley's friends and a few Ancient Age shots (Which we were told needed to be announced by screaming "Annnnccciiieeeennnttt AAaaaaaaage!!!" right before you take them), we decided to head out back to Wrigleyville to explore a bit more.

We decided to go to an Arcade bar, that had all sorts of games like the basketball arcade game, Skeeball, and even an indoor batting cage.  Conor had never played Skeeball, so that was pretty awesome in itself.  Their machines were a bit janky at best, but that wasn't about to stop us from having a blast.  After we got some sweet prizes for all the tickets we had won (think hot wheels cars), we decided to head out and see if we could find a new place that might interest us.

Well, when we heard a place bumping Britney Spears, it was clear that Conor and Shelley had decided it was a requirement that we went in there.  Not a problem, or so we thought.  When we got there, the bouncers weren't so happy with Ryan's white shoes.  After a few arguments that white shoes were not listed on their dress code, Ryan realized that he was literally breaking every single rule on their dress code otherwise -No hoodies, No hats, No Colored Shirts, and soooooo many more.  So we gave up on that place, and found a MUCH better place (although Britney wasn't to be found).  The new bar just had a "No Hats" rule, much easier to comply with.

We didn't spend long at that bar before heading to the final location for the night, The Country Club.  If you have never been there, it was a pretty interesting experience.  It appeared as though it was a bar designed to play country music, with a bit of a country theme to it, but at the same time, they served their beer in 40's (naturally, we got Mickey's) and played classic hip hop.  After a few drinks, some ridiculous dancing, and some great conversations, we called it a night and headed home.

Again, a legendary Chicago night for the books!

Day V: The Train to Omaha

Our first experience on the California Zephyr Train! We were pretty excited... and hungover. Both of those things made us almost miss the train, which would have been really stupid. But! We made it! We got an Uber down to Union Station in Chicago, which was pretty beautiful, but we didn't have too much time to actually take it in.

Bye Chicago! Hello Amtrak!

The train was cool. The seating is super large, the viewing cart is massive with huge windows and outward looking seating that actually promotes social interaction between customers. It connects to the dining carts - the fancy one with white tablecloths and the other one with microwave pizza's and beers.

As we left Chicago, we started leaving the urban area, through the suburbs and finally into the country as we reflected on our amazing time in Chicago.  After a bit of time we decided that we should probably head out to the Amtrak Scenic Viewing Car to take a better look of countryside Illinois.

We hung out there for a bit, and decided we should check out what they had for sale in the cafe car.  We decided to get a little microwaveable pizza and two glasses of wine to enjoy in the viewing car.  As we looked on over scenic Illinois and enjoyed our pizza we talked about how we were liking our Amtrak experience so far.  The seats were all terrifically comfortable (sort of like a first class flight) and the windows were great!  It was definitely a great way to see the country and we were very excited!

After a while, the big event for the day, the Mississippi River, came up!  It was magnificent!  Huge!  Outrageous!  We cannot really convey how large the river really is, it is just gigantic!

Soon our dinner reservation for the Dining Car came up, and we went over to see how it was all going to play out.  We had a nice Tortellini dinner with some Stone IPA's (Seriously?!  They have Stone IPA on this train?!  That is awesome!).  We sat next to a nice lady from Des Moines and talked to her about how this was our first real Amtrak ride and we were excited for the rest of our honeymoon-train!

As night began to fell, we went back to our seat and watched the Missouri River go by, another amazingly large river.  It wasn't long after this that we arrived in Omaha!

We got into Omaha late at 11PM and got an Uber  (A nice guy originally from Ghana was our driver and her was VERY excited that we were on our honeymoon!), to our Hotel, the Element Omaha which was rad. 

Neither of us have stayed in an Element before and it's like a fully contained apartment and the best use of space I think either of us had seen. We went to do a little exploring, except, it was like midnight on a Wednesday and I guess you have to know where you're going at that time to see things that might be open in Omaha. It was very quiet...

So we got a sandwich (actually close to one of the best of the trip? Maybe because Conor never eats sandwiches?) from the hotel's mini supermarket and enjoyed the complimentary bottle of wine the most relaxed and chill receptionist ever had given us in our room ("Would you like a complimentary bottle of wine for free?"  "Uhmmm, yes!") and read about Omaha.

See you tomorrow Omaha!

Day VI: Omaha, The Missouri River, Steaks, Secret Bars & The Train to Denver

We woke up in our hotel and were pretty excited to explore Omaha!  We did a quick little bit of organization and work to get ready for the day (of course we had a little bit of wine while we were prepping!).

We had until 11:00 PM the next day (The Zephyr is in each city every 24 hours) and planned on going to the Train Museum but it was closed (lazy buggers). We also planned on getting super-awesome-best-in-the-whole-land steak but kinda gave up on that as too much money/work.

Omaha in general is much bigger than Ryan remembered from when he had been there before, and seemed pretty cool for a little city.

We left our luggage with the guy at the hotel and walked around the city. We started off our walk with a  ...sorry Omaha... really gross thing that is popular there called a Runza... Sort of a goopy onion-y paste in a fried pastry. Not our style, I guess?

We walked toward the Missouri River, stopping off at one of the nicest Steakhouses in Omaha... for a beer. A nice beer though! A Nebraska IPA.  We were pretty happy when we found out that after tip for both pints we had only spent $10 and then we were a little concerned when we found out that Nebraska IPA is 9%!  Nebraska is not messing around with their IPA's!

After a few conversations we walked the final block to the pedestrian bridge over the Missouri River to watch the sunset.  It was awesome.  We stayed there watching the amazing flow of the gigantic river watching the sun go down.  A strong memory for both of us.

We knew Omaha wouldn't be complete without a visit to a steakhouse, so we stopped and had a steak in Old Town, which was, sadly, only medium.  Bad Omaha! 

On our way back to the hotel we visited a fancy hidden cocktail bar where we had to go into a liquor store and ask for a $1000 bottle of wine. Thankfully we weren't just pranked by the internet and once we were shown where the bottle was, it pushed through into a secret bar where we had Flaming Moe's. They weren't really Flaming Moe's but they were flaming and pretty cool.

Then we picked up our bags, snuggled up in our seats for the 8-ish hour train ride to Denver.  We started watching a movie and eventually got sleepy and gave up.

Bye Omaha and Hello Denver!

Day VII: Denver, Champagne & Strawberries

Denver!

We were feeling a little... ragged when we arrived. Apparently sleeping overnight on the train isn't quite all it is cracked up to be... but we were still in pretty high spirits, even if we were missing a couple hours of sleep, and the introduction to the city was refreshingly cold and we loved seeing the front of the Amtrak station all lit up.

We got to our hotel - Magnolia Hotel -  hoping to hell that they would let us check in at 8am rather than the standard 4pm check in time and whammy thanks Platinum Starwood we were able to check in... to our super baller corner suite overlooking Denver which was amazing. 

We had our complimentary breakfast which was super confusing because the girl at the front of the breakfast place insisted they didn't do that. We walked around in circles in the hotel for about 15 minuted before we convinced her that they did do that. They did. Take that girl.

We had a quick nap, during which Guest Services decided it would be the ideal time to bring a special treat into our room.  We weren't exactly "prepared" to answer the door for them, so that was a little awkward, but despite Ryan's calls of "No thank you" she was like "Uh, I think you'll want this"...

Turns out we did. we were very excited at what they brought in!  Chocolate covered strawberries & Champagne along with a handwritten congratulations letter!  We were over the moon impressed!
Denver (especially the Magnolia Hotel) was making a pretty solid name for itself!

While we ate our chocolate covered strawberries and sipped our fine champagne, we devised a plan for the day.  We were going to go out, walk the 16th Street Mall to the Capital Building, head back down towards our end of town, go to Fresh Craft for an early dinner and then on to Larimer Square, and possibly a bar to end the night.

We started by walking down the 16th Street Mall and checking out all of the cool lights and everything Denver has to offer.  While we had both been in Denver before, this was our first time without a car, and it seemed to make a big difference walking around and getting a real feel for the city.

We walked down to the Capital Building and enjoyed our little photo op at the 5280' Mile High City marking on the steps of the Capital Building.  Then we went up the 16th Street Mall again all the way to Fresh Craft on the other side of the city.  Fresh Craft was pretty sweet and had some good happy hour specials we enjoyed.  Ryan's Cousin Korin had recommended us to check it out, and it was great!  (Thanks Korin!).

After Fresh Craft we went out and took a look at Larimer Square and after a quick stop there decided to head back via an awesome candy shop!  We got back to our hotel and took a quick break, deciding if we wanted to rest easy in for the night or if we wanted to go back out.  After a brief relaxing break, we decided we should probably hit up at least one bar in the city, so we found one with $2 PBR's and went down to enjoy some live music.






After a few beers down there, and both of us being pretty tired (don't forget, our train leaves at 8am tomorrow as well), we decided to head home and settle down.  One more city for the books!

Next up... Glenwood Springs, Colorado!