Greektown. It's only about a mile from where we live, but Brock and I had never really been there. Well, on Monday, we changed that!
We got there at about lunch time, and decided to do what the Greeks do best: eat! Here's a recipe for what Chicago's Greektown is: Greek restaurants + real Greek people who speak with a heavy accent + Greek flags + Greek restaurants + Greek restaurants + gyro stands. So, really, the only thing there is to do in Greektown is eat! :) We walked into a local store and asked the owner where the best food was, and, not skipping a beat, she told us "Greek Islands."
The restaurant itself was super cute! All Greek architecture/decor, a blue-and-white color scheme (the colors of Greece's flag), and complete with waiters who you could barely understand! This place was legit. The thing that sets Greek Islands apart from other restaurants in Greektown is that instead of giving you a "taste of Greece," they give you a "taste from Greece." Almost everything they serve in that restaurant--from the olive oil to octupus--is imported from the motherland!
I ordered a chicken gyro with a Greek salad...very delicious! Brock ordered lamb, or perhaps a more accurate sentence would be he ordered a lamb. I've never seen him eat so much meat! Good lamb is one of those things that you can't get just anywhere, so he ordered a plateful. Personally, I'm not a fan of lamb (too gamey) but Brock loved it said it was the best lamb he'd ever had (it did have a really good sauce on it, I'll give it that). Oh, and he had the most amazing potatoes, too! They were roasted and soaked in a mixture of lemon, olive oil, and tomatoes. Soooo good!
I don't know how we managed to find room for dessert (we always do!), but we ordered karidopita, which is basically a really moist cinnamon spice cake with walnuts, served with vanilla bean ice cream :)
Feeling sufficiently fattened (I'm not kidding when I say that I was full for the entire rest of the day...no dinner!), we set off to burn off some calories by walking through downtown on a self-guided architecture tour! Not gonna lie, Brock wasn't the best sport about this haha. But I dragged him through it! We must have walked around for 2 hours and saw 20 different skyscrapers and sculptures. I couldn't believe that we had been in Chicago all this time and I hadn't noticed these buildings before! They were gorgeous! I guess when you're walking around downtown you get so focused on getting where you need to go that you forget to look up at what's around you. It's a whole 'nother world when you lift your eyes above 45 degrees.
I honestly would not be able to describe to you the beauty of some of these buildings, but I did take pictures, which I will post to Facebook in the next few days :) One of my favorites was Old St. Patrick's Church--the oldest building in Chicago, and one of the few to have survived the Great Fire of 1871. It has two pillars on each side with spires on the top: one is in the Roman style, the other Byzantine. This symbolizes the coming together of both the Western and Eastern parts of the world. Pretty cool, huh?!
Anyway, that was our Monday :) After Brock went to work at 5:30, I came home, caught up on blogging for an hour or two, and crashed. Who knew architecture could be so exhausting!
We got there at about lunch time, and decided to do what the Greeks do best: eat! Here's a recipe for what Chicago's Greektown is: Greek restaurants + real Greek people who speak with a heavy accent + Greek flags + Greek restaurants + Greek restaurants + gyro stands. So, really, the only thing there is to do in Greektown is eat! :) We walked into a local store and asked the owner where the best food was, and, not skipping a beat, she told us "Greek Islands."
The restaurant itself was super cute! All Greek architecture/decor, a blue-and-white color scheme (the colors of Greece's flag), and complete with waiters who you could barely understand! This place was legit. The thing that sets Greek Islands apart from other restaurants in Greektown is that instead of giving you a "taste of Greece," they give you a "taste from Greece." Almost everything they serve in that restaurant--from the olive oil to octupus--is imported from the motherland!
I ordered a chicken gyro with a Greek salad...very delicious! Brock ordered lamb, or perhaps a more accurate sentence would be he ordered a lamb. I've never seen him eat so much meat! Good lamb is one of those things that you can't get just anywhere, so he ordered a plateful. Personally, I'm not a fan of lamb (too gamey) but Brock loved it said it was the best lamb he'd ever had (it did have a really good sauce on it, I'll give it that). Oh, and he had the most amazing potatoes, too! They were roasted and soaked in a mixture of lemon, olive oil, and tomatoes. Soooo good!
I don't know how we managed to find room for dessert (we always do!), but we ordered karidopita, which is basically a really moist cinnamon spice cake with walnuts, served with vanilla bean ice cream :)
Feeling sufficiently fattened (I'm not kidding when I say that I was full for the entire rest of the day...no dinner!), we set off to burn off some calories by walking through downtown on a self-guided architecture tour! Not gonna lie, Brock wasn't the best sport about this haha. But I dragged him through it! We must have walked around for 2 hours and saw 20 different skyscrapers and sculptures. I couldn't believe that we had been in Chicago all this time and I hadn't noticed these buildings before! They were gorgeous! I guess when you're walking around downtown you get so focused on getting where you need to go that you forget to look up at what's around you. It's a whole 'nother world when you lift your eyes above 45 degrees.
I honestly would not be able to describe to you the beauty of some of these buildings, but I did take pictures, which I will post to Facebook in the next few days :) One of my favorites was Old St. Patrick's Church--the oldest building in Chicago, and one of the few to have survived the Great Fire of 1871. It has two pillars on each side with spires on the top: one is in the Roman style, the other Byzantine. This symbolizes the coming together of both the Western and Eastern parts of the world. Pretty cool, huh?!
Anyway, that was our Monday :) After Brock went to work at 5:30, I came home, caught up on blogging for an hour or two, and crashed. Who knew architecture could be so exhausting!
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