I'm excited to try the food at the Taste of Chicago!  =D

5 stars - I love chilling at millennium park. I wonder if we will see David schwimmer again this year?

I love the bean.  It's my favorite attraction in Chicago.  Of course we took plenty of pictures here.

Seems so unassuming...  But when you look on the other side...

You see the faces.  And yes, they are spitting water out at you. I've heard that they are real Chicago residents.

Kids just LOVE to play in the water.  And, this place gets busy during hot days.

#1 attraction in Chicago in my opinion.  The Bean.  It's a great place to take pictures. 

I won't share all the wacky pictures but here's just one example of what you can do with the bean. 

The outdoor amphitheater is a great place to relax.

We went to the Taste of Chicago again this year.  12 tickets cost $8 and the taste portions usually cost 3-4 tickets.  

There were some important things to note from this year's Taste of Chicago.  I read somewhere that over 3.5 million people attended this year.  Despite all the craziness and increasing oil costs, people still ventured out to Taste in droves. 

Here are my highlights:

I love the meatball sandwich from Connie's Pizza.  So, we definitely had to get that.  But, we also tried their pizza this year and it was quite good.  Nice and fluffy for those who like pizzas like that.  It's not your typical deep dish, but definitely good.  They say that they are the #1 pizza at Taste.  I might have to agree with that one.  But, it's not my favorite Chicago style pizza of all though.

You've seen the lines.  You've seen them as people walk around trying to eat them without getting BBQ sauce all over themselves.  That's right...  It's Helen's Turkey Legs.  We had to try one this year.  Every year, I come here and see people eating it and wonder if I should get one.  This year, we did.  The line was ridiculous and it cost 10 tickets but mmmm.  Delicious.  Definitely worth a try if you've never had one.

The Chicago hot dogs were the largest disappointment.  What happened to those things?  It shrunk to half the size.

A goody but oldie is the Italian ice.  Especially the blue raspberry flavor. 

And, who can beat watermelons by the Buckingham Fountain?  These refreshing treats only cost 2 tickets for the small taste piece and 4 for a bigger piece.  I'd ask for the Taste pieces and just ask them to pick out the bigger ones.

We had wanted to go to Pannozzo's Italian Market for some meatball subs that I heard were delicious.  Instead, we found that just about every restaurant was closed for the fourth of July.  And most stores close around 4 pm (CVS Pharmacy for example).  Quite a bummer.  Now we know...  So, since everything was closed, we ended up going back to Taste to eat our dinner.  12 tickets ($8) was perfect for 1 slice of sausage pizza (8 tickets) and one taste portion of their meatball sandwich (4 tickets).  Delicious.

It really is a small world after all.  We went to go see Second City's Campaign Supernova this evening, which was a blast.  I really like how they incorporate the audience into the shows.  And their short skits are reminiscent of SNL (esp. since some of the SecondCity folks actually move on to SNL).  But the funny thing was that the two ladies who sat next to us at the second city show were also staying in the same exact hotel as us.  We realized this as we walked over to the elevator of the hotel and recognized them.  What a small world. 

As for Second City, definitely worth it.  Campaign Supernova had its funny moments.  There were parts where I couldn't stop laughing.  Of couse, there were also parts where I really didn't find it humorous at all.  We're going to see if we can fit in another showing sometime during our trip.  Not sure if it's do-able or not.  But we'll try.  The one downside is that if you go on a Friday showing, there's no free improv session afterwards.  Doh.  Didn't realize it until afterwards.  If you go any other night, they have a free improv session that they do with the audience.

Lincoln park zoo was a blast.  It's 5 stars in my book.  And we FINALLY saw the polar bears.  There were two of them.  And they decidedto come out for a stroll right as I said, "Man...  I'm starting to doubt that they even have polar bears." 

There are also plenty of other cool displays but we didn't have too much time to spend here.  My favorites: the lion/big cat displays, the penguins, the camel, the takin (It's a takin!  Get it?), and the flamingos. 

One other activity for those who have more time: Paddleboating.  There's no time for paddleboating this time, but this could be fun in the future.  I think it was $12 per boat and you can take it out for half an hour.

I kept this picture bigger so that you can see the polar bears better.

I can't believe they ran out of iced lemonade at the Lincoln Park Zoo.  We searched and we searched and we searched.  But there was no more in sight.  Then, I decided to wait in line for snow cones.  And, guess what?  They ran out of cups when I was the next in line.  Out of cups!!!  Next time I'm just buying it when I see it...  ugh.  The consolation is that we did find a vendor who sold slushies so we got some red apple slushies.  Close enough.

Giordano's is one of my favorite Chicago-style Pizza establishments and there are several locations.  We decided to try the one near Wrigley Field and luckily it wasn't too busy when we got there (granted we did get there pretty early).  We were worried since we had called the Mag Mile location the day before at 5pm and it said that there was a 2 hour wait... 

We ordered their sample appetizer platter which was delicious.  BUT...  HUGE.  We couldn't finish it all and had a ton of left overs (not a good thing when you're on vacation and you hate to waste food).  We also ordered far too many pizzas.  Two small pizzas.  One had sausage, onion, mushroom, and green peppers. 

The other, had canadian bacon and pineapple.  Both deep dish.  One would have been more than enough for the both of us but 2 pizzas and an appetizer was way too much.  The worst part was that the waitress never said anything about it.  We tried to eat as much as we could but alas... we could not finish it all.  I like how Giordano's has plenty of oozy mozzarella cheese but my gf didn't really like that.  Overall a delicious pizza and worth a visit if you're in the area.

The lakeview music festival is going on right now outside of wrigley field. Suggested donation is $7. Pretty cool.  We listened to the music for awhile but decided not to partake in the festivities.  Partly because we didn't know anything about it.  But mainly because we were exhausted from a whole day of walking.  Then, we went back to the hotel and saw on the news how exciting it was...  man.  We probably should have spent some time to walk around.  I'll probably try to come by next year.  Seems like a fun event.  Music, booths, plenty of food and drinks and definitely tons of people.