So I’ve been feeling guilty about not taking more pictures, and not blogging more, here among the librarians in Darth Vader’s living room a.k.a. McCormick Place convention center. They’ve covered up the old ugly part pretty well with new buildings; it’s a four building complex now. But it’s still a big rambly damp cold place.
Old McCormick place
Front entrance “new” McCormick Pl
My excuse is that I haven’t eaten anything terrifically memorable, with one exception. Friday night, Joan and I had perfectly adequate Indian – garlic and plain naan, a pretty spicey yellow lentil dal, and chicken in a spinach sauce. I bought a bottle of Ghost Bike Pale Ale to drink with my food – that was pretty good.
Friday morning I bought a banana and a coffee at a temporary Starbucks at the convention center, and sat on a bench that was definitely designed to discourage loitering and sleeping – convex, humped up – so I kinda had to just perch on it.
Friday night we had dinner at the hotel – the Atwood Cafe – and the food was really good, just pricey – a touch over $100 including tax, tip and one glass of wine, for the two of us. The waitress did the thing of recommending the most expensive wine by the glass to go with my pork belly and squash. Friday dinner featured the exception dish – a mint & argula salad with champagne vinaigrette.
Arugula salad
Saturday night we had dinner at a place called Rivers, which was just OK, tho I peeked over when Mark signed his credit card receipt and it was a bit cheaper than the Atwood – maybe $11 -$12 – oh, right, the cost of that upsold glass of wine. I had a spinach salad and a beef teriyaki appetizer. Then I went for drinks with a bunch of librarians and data geeks – most of them had dinner, one guy had a slice of cheesecake – but regardless, the food at Miller’s Pub looked kind of better than Rivers.
Today, Sunday we cabbed to the convention center for the OCLC breakfast – I just had coffee. Like other events in this place, the breakfast was sort of shoehorned sideways into an odd shaped room. When I got there, the coffee has just run out in one of the dispensers, so the wait staff was dumping the fuller one into the emptier one, rather than getting fresh, hot. At noon I got a Starbucks sweet roll and latte. With any luck, the next few things I get to eat will be better.
