Champaign and Chicago

I am in Chicago having a very fabulously Chicago day. This is rapidly becoming my favorite city in the US (besides San Diego). It's walkable, has delicious food, and probably the best art museum in the country in the Chicago Art Institute. It ranks up with the Hermitage and the Musee D'Orsay as my favorite art museums in this whole wide world.
I am now comfortably ensconced in the Blackstone, which, if a hotel could be considered a spiritual home, would be my spiritual home. I will show you rather than tell you why:




I love it so much I am actually trying to make the bathroom at my condo look like the Blackstone bathroom. They also have recently started using Aveda bath products, which I am hoarding like any good traveler does with high quality bathroom products. That's so that when I go places like the Hampton Inn, which I love except for their lackluster blue Crabtree and Evelyn toiletries, I can indulge a bit.

Anyway, depending on whether points or luxury are most important to you, you can let your company make a reservation and since the Blackstone is a Marriott brand hotel you have a chance of getting to the concierge level (oh la la), or just get the points. I almost always go for the latter but that's because I'm trying to fund the accommodations for a trip to Spain. They also have a great, sort of pricey wine bar called Mercat. Some fun, delicious offerings there. I got a cheese plate with various dipping sauces. My favorite, being hilariously disconcerting, was the roasted garlic dulce de leche sauce.

Today for breakfast I went to the Bongo room, which is on Roosevelt and Wabash on the South Loop. Um, yeah, that's the thing to do for breakfast, my friends. I was dreadinng having to choose between sweet and savory when the waitress told me I could get any pancake or french toast in a one slice size vs a whole order. so that would be what I did. I got the roasted red pepper, feta, and spinach eggs benedict and a slice of brown sugar brioche french toast. The eggs benedict was ridiculously good, truly the best hollandaise sauce I have ever had, a very generous portion with a mountain of potatoes that, if it weren't still so close to New Year's resolution time when I decided to make an effort at self-control, would have been annihilated to the pain of my tummy. The french toast was great, not necessarily something I felt like I couldn't have gotten elsewhere, but still excellent.