Eat, Walk, Cocoon

...Continued from yesterday:

   By Friday morning, November 9, winter and the first snowfall had arrived in Chicago.

   Our plan for the day had been to take the "L" - short for "elevated train" and the local vernacular for Chicago's rapid transit train system - to the Loop area of downtown and spend the day doing something cultural, maybe visiting the aquarium or the Chicago Art Institute. Nor were we intending to  be put off by a few flakes of snow,

...barely noticeable by Chi Town standards.

    But first on the agenda was breakfast.

     We took the bus from Claire and Miguel's Logan Square neighborhood  to nearby Wicker Park to one of their favorite breakfast eateries,

...a little spot called Kanela.

      Claire had her favorite, avocado toast,

...while Miguel had his favorite, Pork Belly Benedict. As I'd never before tasted pork belly, Miguel gave me a taste of his. To me it tasted kind of like a thin, tender, flavorful pork chop.

     I tried the Impossible Burger,

...a vegan burger that was advertised as being indistinguishable from a beef burger.

     I'm not sure that was the case, but with all the fixings piled on it was a darned good burger.

      By the time we finished breakfast the snow had stopped, but after our nice meal in that warm, cozy restaurant the air outside felt so cold and damp that we all agreed that it might be lovely to just return home and spend the day cocooning.
      So we walked through Wicker Park,

...back to Logan Square,

...via the 606, a former elevated train route that is now a walking/biking path.

      And so we spent the day cocooning with the kitties (see yesterday's post),

...until dinner time rolled around, at which time we again ventured out,

...until we reached our destination, a vegan restaurant called The Chicago Diner.

     We started out with an appetizer of seitan barbecued ribs that were incredibly delicious.

     The rest of our food, not so much.

      The eggplant ricotta rolls over linguini dish that I ordered looked lovely but was so spicy hot that I could barely swallow one bite.

     Claire's seitan and vegetables was just as inedibly hot.

    Miguel's Cuban sandwich and vegan macaroni and cheese, on the other hand, were tasteless.

     So, except for the appetizer, dinner was kind of a bust all around.
     Still, we did have a nice brisk walk back home,

...where it was comfy and warm.