Benjamin's Birthday Dinner

February 6, 2015 - This evening we met up with family at Texas Roadhouse to celebrate Benjamin's birthday!

I love how that creepy Indian is looking over my shoulder

Pier Park & Margaritaville

   September 14, 2013-After a morning of fun on the beach we all got cleaned up and visited Pier Park for lunch and shopping.

Kate’s sisters, Anna & Leslie

The entrance to Pier Park, directly across from the pier

We ate lunch at Margaritaville

Wow, so maybe we’ll just look at this $700 margarita maker and not touch…

Every hour they play the song, “Margaritaville” and the airplane lowers the disco ball and salt shaker

Ninja turtles

View of the pier from our table

After the meal we walked across the street to the pier

The pier is a 1/4 mile long

Next stop: Ron Jon Surf Shop

Benjamin checking out the GoPro display

Sunday Fried Chicken @ Gallagher’s

Gallagher’s is a restaurant known for its fried chicken and it has been renovated in an early 20th century style. 481.5

On Sunday night’s they serve an all-you-can fried chicken dinner…and it was delicious!

Grandpa Dave

Chicago Chinatown

  After a goodnight’s sleep we checked out and said farewell to the Indian Lakes Resort and headed to downtown Chicago.

  My Mom and Kate have been to Asia and have always wanted to take us to Hong Kong where my Dad grew up.  Mom learned that Chicago has the largest Chinatown in the US* so going to it would probably be the closest we could get to Asia in the mid-west.

*The Chinatown in New York is geographically larger, but Chicago has a higher population

  Mom and Kate were pretty impressed with how authentic Chinatown felt to a real Asian city.  Kate thought it even smelled like Hong Kong- a mixture of food and gasoline.

  Something that was very different was the traffic on the streets.  Everyone still followed traffic laws and there weren’t enough cabs and no mopeds .

  Some of the buildings looked interesting:

Christian book store       

Chicago public library

  Well, it was time for lunch so we walked to the “Moon Palace Shanghai Restaurant.”  it always a bit of a risk to walk eat authentic Chinese (or in this case Shanghainese) food.  Last time I ate Dim Sum in a Chinatown I had an allergic reaction and broke into hives. Thankfully, Mom had looked up restaurant reviews online and had found the “Moon Palace” had good reviews.

 

 

Kate wearing a smirk on her face because she’s the only one who could eat her meal with chop sticks!

I used a spoon

   After lunch we started walking back to the car:

 

  We took a look at one of the grocery stores.

The Chinese can certainly go through a lot of oranges!  This stack was dropped off for just one store!

As soon as we set foot in the store, our nostrils caught the stench of dead fish and who knows what else.  I think we regretted that we’d already eaten.

Dried Croaker Fish  -  Dried Fungus

Turnip Slices        -          Dried Shrimp              -               Mussels            

  Kate’s heading for the door…