Goodbye Chicago: Part IV

As I write this, I realize my goodbye to Chicago has been lengthier than expected.  This will hopefully be the last one as we really are moving tomorrow (as much as we can anyways).  Its been a long goodbye, but a fruitful one.  I've been able to actively do things and see people that I haven't seen in a long time. 

This past saturday was St. Patrick's Day.  It wasn't just the celebration, but it actually was St. Patrick's Day.  Chicago, so I've heard, is the largest St. Patrick's Day celebration outside of Ireland.  There are quite a few Irish and Irish pubs around, truth be told.  This year, the South Side Irish Parade resumed after a 2 year hiatus.  We didn't go because we heard that it was going to be much tamer, i.e. no open containers allowed. 

Kel and I decided to go see the Chicago river get dyed.  They dye it at 10 am via a speedboats using orange dye that magically turns the river 'Irish Emerald' green.  Unfortunately, we made a bad call in taking the bus down instead of the red line and ended up missing the actual event.  We ended up being about 15 min late, but the day was so beautiful that we didn't care at all.  When we finally got down there, it was packed.  I mean thousands and thousands of people.  Kel and I took some pics of the river and ended up meeting up w/our friends Chris and Melissa.  They were party w/friends at Renaissance.  Nothing like a good old fashioned hotel room party at 10:30 in the morning. 

We decided not to go to the parade at noon, but instead went to Rock Bottom Brewery's rooftop.  It was absolutely gorgeous out.  Too hot in fact for how we were dressed, but we weren't complaining.  Then we went to Kelsey's in Lincoln Park where we met up w/the crew and finally headed to Chapman's.  By then, after whiskey and coke on the bus, sips of moonshine, pulls of jaeger from the bottle chased w/Red bull, and a few beers, I was done for. 

As the last big thing we got to see in the city, I'm glad we got to do it.  The weather made it that much better.