Day Two - Strange Waiter, Boat Tour, and Brazilian BBQ

Sorry I have been slacking on posting. I'm in Oklahoma now and there's free internet here, so I shall fill in the holes that I left since I last updated.

On Day 2, we woke up kind of late because we were so tired from the day before. After about a two mile walk from our hotel, we finally arrived at Yolk, which is a breakfast/brunch/lunch kind of joint. We had the most eccentric, friendly, chipper waiter who was cute in a really sad and pathetic way. He had a tendency to materialize out of nowhere, mostly to fill our water glasses, and scare the crap out of us. We joked that the next time he would come out from under the table asking, "More water?" He would always invade our personal space to ask us questions and apologized for the most random things, like filling up our water glasses. He even apologized for being too weak when he brought out my plate... his words: "Sorry I kind of threw that down at you... it was heavy...." It got to the point where every time he came around we would start busting up laughing because we were obsessed with his idiosyncrasies! I laughed so hard I cried. What a character.

I had a potato, bacon, and green pepper skillet with pancakes and Yuri ordered the eggs benedict. Both were downed with a glass of strawberry orange juice. DELICIOUS!

After breakfast (which was really more like lunch since we ate kind of late) we walked around Museum Campus trying to decide which museum to go to. I said all I really cared about was the Art Institute, so that's where we went!

I was surprised by how much I remembered from AP Art History! I recognized a lot of the paintings and remembered a lot about the artists who made them. We saw all kinds of masterpieces like Monet's Haystack series, Seurat's La Grande Jatte, stuff by Henri Toulouse de Lautrec, Fragonard, Goya, Manet, Gaugin, Delacroix, Watteau, and more! I never thought I would actually get to see this stuff in person. It was awesome.

Watteau

A really cool room in the museum

Just kidding! It was part of a set of insane miniatures that this guy made.

Goofing around in the kid's exhibit

We decided to go on a boat tour to learn more about Chicago's architecture, so we went down to the Wendella tour dock and bought tickets. The next tour didn't start for a while, so we went back to the hotel and propped our feet up because they were so swollen from walking everywhere. That's what I get for being from a driving town. Anyway, we went back and boarded the vessel, and Yuri hooked us up with some beers that we could sip during the tour.

Our super cheery tour guide with whom I kind of fell in love.

The bottom of the Tribune building. FIGURES they stick Arizona's lame contribution (the Petrified Forest? Really!?!?) behind a lamp where no one will see it

Sears Tower

Aqua (meant to look like water is flowing down the sides)

Corn Cob Tower... it's not really called that but it looks like one! Parking garage and condos in one building -- a city within a city.

For dinner, Yuri made reservations at Fogo de Chao, which is a Brazilian barbecue restaurant. WOW. They had a magical salad bar that always managed to be fully stocked no matter how many people took food from it, and the meats they offered were sooooo flavorful and juicy and tender.

Demonstration

My salad, some fried bananas (DELICIOUS), garlic mashed potatoes (ALSO DELICIOUS) and polenta (DELICIOUS AS WELL)

I should also mention that the service there was RIDICULOUSLY attentive. It was really funny because when we first were seated I was playing around with my card, halfway flipping it to the green side. No later than 10 seconds afterwards there were about 3 servers at our table trying to offer me a slice of their meat. We also got asked about 152450058072 times if we were okay or if we needed anything, and people would come by and fill our water glasses even if we had only taken a sip from it. Talk about service.

Anyway, after dinner it was pretty late, so we headed back to the hotel and crashed for the night, feeling so full that we wanted to throw up. Consider this day a success.