Chicago!

Who doesn’t love Chi-town? We do! We go as often as we can. We love running along Lake Michigan, biking on bike friendly streets and shopping in the downtown area.

This time during our visit we participated in the Critical Mass Bike Ride (2000 bikers) that happens every 4th Friday each month throughout the summer.

The Critical Mass bike ride always starts downtown at the Daley Plaza. The ride usually covers (30 miles) of surrounding towns and up and down neighborhood blocks. It’s such a fun ride and people throughout the neighborhoods sit on their porches to cheer on the bikers!

The Marriott Renaissance sits along the river. The views are amazing, and the décor is modern sleek. The staff is always helpful, and they don’t mind that we store our bikes for a few days. They lock them in storage so all we must do is show them our claim ticket and they retrieve them from the back room. It makes it so nice to be able to rent the bikes for the long weekend and have the hotel store them at no charge. Last year when we checked into the hotel, they included us in a TV commercial they were shooting showing off the newly remodeled hotel. We have yet to see it… it was to air on the Travel channel. It was exciting seeing how they shoot commercials and they even invited us to an after party. It was held in the hotel bar/lounge and included all the drinks and food you desired. We were stuffed by the end of the night 🙂 We felt a little out of place considering we didn’t bring party clothes just athletic wear. Dave thinks no one noticed…I’m sure they did, but everyone made us feel very welcome.

There are always crazy bikers usually with decked out bikes and loud music boxes attached. This guy showed up with his dog for the bike ride- helmet and all!!