Chicago, Milwaukee, and Home again

We are home from a great trip!
Our travels started last Friday afternoon. We made it to this side of Louisville (which reminds me of a classic Dad joke I'll share later) and after a good night's rest, we arrived in the Windy City Saturday afternoon. Chicago is a beautiful, clean, cool, and COLD city.
After a fortuitous visit to the Shedd Aquarium (our visit was FREE, aside from $15 parking, for taking 30 minutes to give our opinion on a proposed addition/renovation to the aquarium. Saved us about 100 bucks!), we went to a yummy pizza place called Lou Malnatto's for dinner. Then on to Kate and Chad's in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee is also a remarkable city. We went to church on Sunday at the Milwaukee City Branch. They met in a lovely old church. I wish we had taken our camera with us. It was built in the early 1900's and had lots of Arts and Crafts details and a ginger-bread-house look to it's facade. We were welcomed by many members and it was very spiritual service.
I toured a good bit of Milwaukee on foot during my runs Mon, Tues, and Wed. I ran 53 minutes each day. Monday I ran down to the lake and then to the Basilica of St. Josaphat. On Tuesday I ran up 6th street toward the city center. I was pretty much in the slum--but paralleled the freeway most the time, so I felt safe. On Wed. I headed to the city center via 1st Street. This was the way of choice. I got to the arts district called The Third Ward; I felt my coolness-0-meter moving up more and more the deeper into the district I ran.
We took the boys to the Betty Brinn museum on Tues. This museum was designed EXACTLY for our boys. We were there for a solid 4 hours, and they had fun the entire time. It had all kinds of hands-on activities for them.
We walked from the backyard of the Betty Brinn to the Milwaukee Art Museum--an incredible work of architecture--and took lots of pics.
On Wed. we drove down to Lakeshore drive to a park that overlooks Lake Michigan. That whole area is gorgeous. We took stairs down to the beach and stayed as long as we could endure the winds. Then we met Kate and drove to Cedarburg, a cute little town north of Milwaukee. We bummed around the fun shops there and enjoyed yummy treats from the candy store. I told Kate she needed to open a boutique there. Her style is modern, refined, and infectious. I came home with all kinds of ideas for projects just from visiting their house!
We were already making plans for our next trip up there on our drive home. Kate and Chad were awesome hosts as we enjoyed relaxing eating yummy food, and touring beautiful cities!

Oh yeah--here's the joke: "How do you pronounce the capitol of Kentucky, 'Looweeville' or 'Loowisville' ? Look for the answer tomorrow...