Monday, March 9, 2009

BEST $20 bucks I ever spent...


Hubby's birthday was last week.

We had a small celebration on the "official" day by having dinner with Sabrina at Famous Dave's BBQ (one of Hubby's fav restaurants) and then cake at our house.

For his gift, I redeemed the two free nights I had accumulated at any Kimpton Hotel and found cheap airfare to Midway Airport in Chicago. We flew there last Friday and came home yesterday.



We love Chicago -- I used to live there and we both love the vibrancy of the city, the cool stuff you can do at any hour of the day, the great food, fantastic people watching, and, of course, the "El".

Unfortunately, it rained all weekend. And I mean RAINED.



We were lucky in that it didn't rain when we walked from our hotel to the Art Institute, where we waited in line for about 30 minutes to get tickets. (Apparently a rainy day spent inside the Art Institute wasn't just our good idea...). I love this photo because it is so "touristy"....




We spent pretty much the whole day at the museum and had a blast.

We went to a hip, cool trendy restaurant for dinner on Saturday night: Sushi Samba. Dee-licious food, fun atmosphere. The rain also let up enough so we could stroll back from the restaurant to the hotel.

Sunday, the rain gods were not so kind. It poured all day. Buckets and buckets and sheets and sheets of cold, March rain.

We slept in late and then took a cab to Gino's East to indulge in some really great deep dish pizza.

The cab driver was a nice, friendly guy and we chatted about stuff on the way to Gino's. Thanked the guy, paid the fare and went in to the restaurant.

Being the nice (vain) girl that I am, I wanted to go to the restroom to wipe the rain off my head when I discovered that I LEFT MY PURSE IN THE CAB.

AAARRRGGGH. Panic! Fear! AARRRRGGGGH.

My ID, my credit cards, my camera, my make up, my cash, my PURSE! Left in a cab in a city with millions of cabs.


The waiter at the restaurant said "Just call the cab company".


Under normal (not pouring rain) circumstances, this would be a smart idea. But, because it had been raining so hard when we hailed the cab, we just jumped in, rode to the restaurant and jumped out.


"Company?" Ummmmm, errr, ahhhh. No clue.


For once, I had no idea what to do. Usually, I'm pretty good in a pickle. I can figure out "Plan B" probably faster and quicker than most (if I do say so myself...).

This time, I was stumped and fearful. I could certainly cancel the credit cards, but how do you get on an airplane with NO ID? How do you replace pictures on a camera?

After a few minutes of fretting and using the "F" word (a lot), who walks in the restaurant, but our friendly, cheerful, honest, WONDERFUL cab driver, who says "You forgot your bag in the cab".

I ran over to him and hugged him, which I think surprised the heck out of him. I was very, very grateful.


We went to the cab, I got my bag and give him a $20.00 for finding it and returning it. To the left, you see the bag, on the table, at the restaurant, with ME!






Hubby and I were able to enjoy dee-lish-e-ous pizza and the rest of his birthday weekend.


After lunch, we hopped on the "El" back to Midway and the birthday adventure was over...

3 comments:

Sunshine said...

What a great story!
We love Chicago too.
Great about the found purse.

Anonymous said...

Love the success story about the purse. I'm the type of person what panics so much I CAN'T come up with a plan B! Guess who I'm gonna call when I need a plan B in the future?!?

Dori said...

Happy Bday to Hubby!

I'm so glad your purse was returned. Restores our faith in humanity when things like that happen.

I would have been saying a lot of "F" words, too. ;-)