subway | Travels, Adventures, and Leisure

First time in Chicago! Landed at ORD at 5pm. We ended up Ubering to the hotel (was $45), which took 50 minutes. The alternative was the train, but we wanted to look up thing on our laptop and sleep.

The hotel we’re staying at is at The Loop (The Chicago Athletic Association). It’s a Hyatt hotel. I like the older vibe they are trying to maintain. However, for next time, definitely gonna try and get the junior suite with two double beds. But I will say the hotel is conveniently located around all the major tourist spots, like beside Millennium Park and the Chicago River

For our first night out, we went towards the west loop to eat at Chicago Q. Details are here:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2023/09/01/chicago-q/

The area reminded me of church and Weasley apartments in Toronto.

After dinner, we stopped by watched a comedy show in The Second City. It was a mix of a scripted sketch and improv. Definitely recommend going again.

We then went to a rooftop bar nearby called Utopia. It’s a chill place to hang out. We played beer pong, connect 4, and bean bag toss.

After, we visited a place near the River North area called Celeste. It’s a four story club (but since it was a Wednesday only 2 floors were open). I would recommend going back (they also surprisingly had food).

On the second day, we first did some shopping on the Magnificent mile. We hit up the Nike store, as well as Saks.

We then went to get some Chicago deep dish pizza at Gino’s. Details can be found here:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2023/09/01/ginos-east/

After grabbing some food, we walked off the food by going to the Water Tower Place mall. It’s fairly large, clean, looks new with multiple levels and lots of store. Seems like a good place to shop.

We the did an architecture tour that is on a boat in the Chicago river (only 45 minutes for $27!). Some things I remember from the tour:

-river flows opposite direction forcefully because of pollution reasons (Lake Michigan is full of pollution)

-many buildings have water tanks in the top floors to help with wind

-there are several “adaptive reuse” building in Chicago (re-purposing old factories)

-there’s a building that you can pay $1000 to propose to your significant other and get champagne

-the former Sears Tower is the the tallest building in Chicago

-they mentioned the Apple Store (which is by the river, and similar to the NYC 5th st store since it is two stories) use to have its roof like a MacBook cover with an Apple logo on top. They were told to remove the Apple logo

After the tour, took a bit of a nap before heading out to a fancy dinner at Aviary. Details can be found here:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2023/09/01/aviary/

We then went to a speak easy underneath the restaurant, where our waiter at the Aviary helped us bypass the waitlist. It is called The Office (likely since they pretended it was an office to conceal it from being a speak easy). Details here:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2023/09/01/the-office-2/

The rest of the days in Chicago were spent at the Arc Music festival. Here are some key highlights and details:

-Taking the subway is probably the best way too and from the festival (5 min walk from the hotel, and 5 stops away). It can get crowded at night, but still fairly fast

-Security is better with VIP global (instead of GA) since you don’t get groped in case you want to sneak anything in (since you get to choose the person that you would want to search you, so obviously the member of the opposite sex). Also if you are VIP you are forced to use VIP line (can’t use GA).

-It is dusty at the expansion stage. Bring a mask, and shoes will definitely get wrecked

-Elrow stage is super fun with lots of inflatables, and oversized puppet things, plus tons of confetti!

-Day 1 we saw Sam Divine, Boris Brejcha, Adam Beyer, James Hype, Eric Prydz (Holo)

-Day 2 we saw Dombresky, Hot Since 82, Fisher b2b with Loco Dice, and John Summit

-Day 3 we saw Peggy Gu, Vintage Culture, and Tale of Us

-Radius is a great club. It’s fairly large. Easy to get drinks, and like the production set up overall. Only thing is they don’t have Redbull, only Ghost (which is disgusting)

-Eric Prydz and Adam Beyer’s after hours set at Radius was the best ones each of them have done (maybe because it was more dancey/clubby than their usual sets).

-John Summi my set (at least the part I catches) at the festival was better than the after party at Radius

-Radius has a second room. Need to check it out next time

-We saw Vintage culture at Concord Music Hall. Great venue, but his set was better at ARC

Lastly, here are the other restaurants we went to during the trip…

-The Dearborn: http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2023/09/01/the-dearborn/

-Cindy’s Rooftop: http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2023/09/06/cindy-rooftop/

Fifth day in New York City!

Started off the day going from our hotel at south of Central Park (the Warwick) to one at Midtown, the Hilton Garden Inn Midtown. Stayed in this area before in 2019 when Ben lived in NYC. Great area. Clean, close to many eateries, it’s new, close to midtown.

After switching hotels, grabbed food at this bagel place near by:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2021/11/26/zuckers-bagels/

Then, took the subway to Battery Park to check out the Statue of Liberty. The Subway system is actually pretty easy to navigate if using Apple Maps. Also, the iPhone let’s you “tap in” very easily (ie you don’t need a metro card). For the subway system, seems that circles mean regular trains, and a Diamond means express. You also want to make sure you check if the direction is “uptown” or “downtown” (at least for north and south trains). Usually taking a train along Park Avenue it is the (green) 4 or 5 train. One thing I haven’t figured out is the difference between numbers and letters for the train names (ie we took an A train when going south on a street near Broadway).

For the Statue of Liberty, we got the tickets ahead of time. I did make a mistake of getting a fairy ride from New Jersey instead if New York, but fortunately they were not busy and accepted the tickets (fyi tickets also had a “time”, and they do airport security style checks).

The first stop of the ferry ride is Liberty Island. There is a great view of Manhattan from the island. Apparently the statue is 2 pennies thick.

The second stop is Ellis island. Having my citizenship and going through the museum there was pretty cool. They have the 100 questions listed on a wall of the citizenship test. They also restored the place where they process new immigrants in the 1900s (although they didn’t really emphasize the 240000 (out of 12 million) people rejected and sent back to their home countries (they only mentioned people who committed crimes and sneaked in illegally were sent back). Also below is a map where people from different countries live in the US (not sure if it is just permanent residents and citizens).

After Statue of Liberty, checked out Midtown West for dinner and drinks. Wanted to go to Jin Ramen, but they were completely full (so next time!). We ended up going to a place called Jing Fong, which was an excellent dim sum place:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2021/11/25/jing-fong/

Midtown West nightlife is basically in Amsterdam avenue (above 75st, and below 100st). We checked out 2 bars there (which also had dance floors, and also met up with a friend and checked out a wine bar:l. Overall Amsterdam street reminded me of Polk street in San Francisco

-Jake’s Dilemma

-(one I don’t remember)

-Sur Vingt Wine Bar

Ended the night at a bar called Industry (at Hell’s Kitchen, where a bunch of nightclubs and bars are at also), and had an awesome night :).