I organized this one.
Emily H, Bill, and Jeremy joined us.
As well as special guests Kelly, Jeff, and their sons Nico and Joey! (from out of town, Indy) Our first kids. And they were super troopers, even though it was cold and snowy. Great job!
Taylor Street/Little Italy/University Village flickr album/pics
Taylor Street/Little Italy/University Village 'Hoods packet
We started at Sweet Maple Cafe on Taylor, one of my favorite breakfasts in the whole frickin city. Fried chicken livers for days.
We walked down Taylor street a bit, and looked at the exterior of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, even though we KNEW it was closed. It's still on my list of places that I need to go back to, to check out.
There's a little piazza across the street dedicated to Dimaggio.
We stopped in a great little Italian bakery/shop called Conte Di Savoia and grabbed some goodies to go. Cookies.
We walked through a super snowy Arrigo park to check out the statue of Columbus that once stood at the 1893 World's Columbian Expo. Nice.
Time for a church. Notre Dame de Chicago. Really nice stained glass. Really nice painted dome.
Some super sweet old houses from the late 1800s.
Whoops, another church! The Shrine of our Lady of Pompeii. Nice doors. Peeked into interior, but service going on. So we keep moving.
We then drive over to the Jane Addams Hull House museum. Very cool museum about her and her mission in Chicago. Would recommend.
We then tromped around the frozen tundra of the University of Illinois at Chicago. UIC was built all in one fell swoop in the 60s, designed by Netsch. It's real groovy. Lots of concrete and an elevated pedway system (that's falling apart).
It'd been a minute since we'd been to a church. So onto Holy Family. It survived the Chicago fire. It was very grand. And, if memory serves, super closed. But someone just happened to be leaving some sort of meeting there as we approached, and we slipped in a side door. Like we do.
And then St. Ignatius College Prep. It's a very good, very expensive, and very snooty Catholic High School. With lovely courtyards. We managed to get inside THERE cause they were prepping for some sort of activity that we were crashing. They were very nice about it. We did NOT make it upstairs, though, to see their sexy library or their "natural history museum." Ah well.
We ended with some classic Italian American fare at Tufano's Vernon Park Tap. Super old school red sauce joint. Amazing.
All in all, a good day. If cold and snowy. Lots of great food in this neighborhood. SO MANY CHURCHES. Nice parks in the summer, I'm sure.
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