I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane

"I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane" was the theme song dancing in this small-town girl's head as Lisa, Abby and I went through the short security line at Manhattan's "international" airport.

OK. Maybe it more "puddle jumper" than big jet plane. But we were leaving the plains of Kansas for the big city of Chicago to visit my sister, Darci, for the weekend.

Yes, I was the person clicking the camera as we flew. (Lisa and Abby gave me a good-natured ribbing about my tourist-y photo taking. Since they were sitting in a different row, I told them they could pretend they didn't know me.) It was too pretty to ignore. And it's not like I get this camera angle very often. For you rule-followers like me, I was using my regular camera - not the cell phone camera.

Anyway, we arrived in Chicago, where we traded our prairie skyscrapers for the real ones.

One of our first stops was Glazed and Infused Doughnuts. (In our defense, we had an early morning, and we took two days to eat them.) I loved the name and the logo. We chose a maple bacon, old-fashioned, blueberry lemon and a toffee-topped doughnut. We saw several other doughnut shops, most of them with lines. Is a doughnut trend replacing the cupcake fascination? You heard it here first.

While in Chicago, we ate lots of yummy food. (And I promise I didn't take a photo every time. Really.)

In photo above, starting at the upper right: Brunch at The Paris Club was Norwegian Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon for me. I didn't care for the oysters at GT Fish and Oyster Bar, but everyone else loved them. Our meals there were biscuits and lobster gravy, smoked whitefish quiche and shrimp and grits. The other photos are from Glazed and Infused.

Our waiter at GT Fish & Oyster Bar doubled as our photographer.

Left to right: Me, Darci, Lisa and Abby

Saturday afternoon, we went to two street art fairs. Along the way, several homes were open for garden tours. It appears I was more entranced by the gardens than the artwork. However, artists tend to prefer you not take random photos of their art.  There's that rule-following thing again.

On Sunday, we saw "The Book of Mormon" at the Bank of America Theatre. Let's just say that I prefer old-fashioned musicals like "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story." The theater was gorgeous, and it's always fun to watch the quick costume and set changes. The content was a little racy for my blood. (I was unintentionally a rule breaker at the theater. At Century II, you can take photos before the show starts. But the usher yelled at me, "No photos," as I took a photo of the stage before the musical started.)

I lucked out and was on the correct side of the plane as we flew into Manhattan on Monday.

It was a whirlwind weekend of walking, eating, talking, shopping, laughing and irritating Abby with our Sunday-night deck time when all three of us "old people" knew every word to "Hair," The Carpenters' "For All We Know" and several others songs from the '70s.

As Lisa says, "Let's make some memories." And we did.