fun trip to chicago

way back in march, i took a trip to michigan city with friends.  most of them were interested in march madness.  i was lured by the promise of interesting shopping.  we had considered the possibility of taking a day trip to chicago for some “interesting shopping” one of those days, but with weather and schedules…. the chicago part didn’t happen.  i’d put together this great google maps calendar with fun shops to visit and bakeries to do a “cupcake crawl” among, and i really wanted to do this trip sometime.  so this weekend, we finally went!  we started off the trip at mitsuwa–a japanese superstore in the ‘burbs that is mostly groceries, but also has a food court, a bookstore, a travel agency and a purveyor of dinnerware.  i was sorely tempted by several books, but decided that i really needed to use the one i bought last time before i can justify buying more.  but they have such beautiful photography!  there were a few sewing pattern books that i liked, one of dinner table origami, and a very unusual book about wire art (it had little wire chairs, little wire birds and birdcages, and these funky vase-on-the-wall things that combined wire and test tubes).  i settled for this cute kitty bowl (it has a nice plastic lid for leftovers!) and two bento boxes.  now i really need to start packing bento lunches.  my friend and i enjoyed some simple avocado and cucumber sushi rolls before we headed deeper into downtown.

our next stop was the (slightly creepily named) “uncle fun.”  imagine a tiny, packed store, filled to the brim with funny gags, tiny plastic thing-a-ma-bobs in drawers, oddball books, antique and/or inappropriate postcards, fun toys (for kids or for older kids like me), and a few other things (like bacon, pickle or toast band-aids).  after i got over the stimulation overload, i walked out with a girl version of the classic “wooly willy” game (the one where he has metal shavings for hair and you can rearrange it with the magnet-on-a-stick), a teeny, purse-sized version of that game that consists of water, tiny plastic rings and posts and when you press a button, air shoots up into the water, making the rings spin up and you try to catch them on the posts (this game totally fascinated me for hours as a kid), and lastly (but probably my favorite find of the whole day) a toy helicopter for only $4!  great addition to my stash of kid toys for visiting children.

when we left uncle fun, my traveling companion noticed that there was a store called “paper boy” across the street.  i’d read about (and wanted to visit) this store, but had somehow missed that it was so close to uncle fun (although according to their website, the stores are part of the same empire), so i happily followed her across the street.  oh readers.  have i told you about my paper fetish?  over the years it has manifested itself in different ways–stationery, wrapping paper, blank notebooks–but here it is:  i. love. paper.  and paper boy has lots of different kinds of paper.  i couldn’t quite bring myself to pay for the letterpress thank you cards from egg press, but oh man were they fantastic.  i also drooled over stationery designed by angela adams, lotta jansdotter, and denyse schmidt (all from chronicle press), but in the end, i stuck with a single box of lotta jansdotter stickers/labels.  that took a lot of restraint, but i do love the box of stickers i got.

next, back to the car where we hopped in and went in search of another parking spot (i got to practice my parallel parking skills so many times!).  we parked near a store we were planning to visit, but then when we started walking, we changed our mind (i love traveling with people who are willing to change plans as we go) and decided to go in search of quiltology.  i’d found them online and they sell freespirit fabrics, so i wanted to see some of those prints in person.  we didn’t quite realize that it would be a fifteen minute walk from our lovely parking space.  hooray for spontaneous exercise opportunities!  the fabric store was very small and as far as i could tell, pretty much only carried free spirit (is kaffee fassett part of that line?  his fabrics were there too) and some batiks.  i drooled and drooled, but because i didn’t have a specific project in mind, i settled for 6 fat quarters.

by this time, we were both pretty hungry, so we hiked back to the car and drove down the road in search of minnie’s (abandoning plans to visit two cupcake shops on the way).

i’d read about this sandwich shop and just had to see their tiny sandwiches.  i thought it might just be a gimmick (remember mini-burgers from burger king?) but i was pleasantly surprised.  the restaurant decor was charming and the sandwiches were quite tasty!

my favorite was probably the chicken salad (despite the oil on the toasted bread having a strange flavor on my last bite), but the mykonos (greek) and the cuban were yummy too (although i wished the slice of pork on the cuban had had more flavor–not so “pork”-y).

my vegetarian friend had plenty of options to choose from and ended up going with a cucumber cream cheese sandwich, a brie and apricot jam sandwich, and a mini veggie pizza.  her meal also came with very skinny fries (which tasted way better that either of us expected them to) with a creamy dipping sauce, and a teeny tiny “carafe” of wine (about the equivalent of one glass).

the waiter was also nice enough to bring us each samples of a “mini-freeze” which i’d thought would be more milkshake-y but ended up being so thick, it was more ice-creamy and wouldn’t have really worked as a drink with the meal.  plus, i was still holding out hopes for cute cupcakes.

we left the restaurant in search of wicker park.  i was very much enjoying exploring a different side of chicago than i was familar with.  normally, we see the highway, the airport, ikea, and maybe occasionally the downtown museum campus.  but this was a part of chicago i hadn’t really seen before.   i mean, once or twice when i was in college, or right after college, i took a trip to chicago and made my way via the subway to the crate and barrel store or something, but … chicago is a big city and there is still so much that i haven’t seen.  it’s fun to discover new things so close to home!

our next stop was the bakery “sweet cakes” where we finally got some cupcakes.  we got there about half an hour before they were supposed to close and the cupcakes were…. kind of meh.  although i had the option of full-sized or mini cupcakes (we decided to stick with the “mini” theme), there were only three flavor choices–lime, orange or coffee flavored–and they were cold.  and had a giant pile of frosting on the top.

i realize that this would be a plus in most people’s books, but i’m not a huge fan of frosting.  maybe a cupcake crawl isn’t really right for me.  oh well.  the bakery itself was charming and had some wonderfully bizarre art in the courtyard.

we back-tracked a bit, sure that we could find wicker park (or at least the wicker park my friend remembered visiting years ago).  we stopped, parked and walked on a street that looked somewhat promising and stumbled upon renegade handmade (the store that originally created the renegade craft fair) and enjoyed browsing through their shop,

then went next door to coco rouge, a chocolatier which boasted this on their sidewalk sign:

and we made a brief foray into a bead shop, then back to the car.  by this time, both of us were feeling kind of tired, it was getting dark, and shops were beginning to close up, so we decided to head home.  we did make one last effort to locate the wicker park of my friend’s memory and found it on milwaukee street, but like i said, it was late, the night crowd was starting to emerge and thrift shops were closing up for the night, so we filed the information in our “next time” folder and searched for the highway.

we made it home safe and sound and relaxed.