A Charm'd Day with F.R.I.E.N.D.S
- lanekari1
- Mar 5, 2019
- 4 min read
Over the weekend one of my bestie’s and I took a trip to Chicago. We took the 9:46am Amtrak Train from Bloomington to Chicago. The train was late to leave Bloomington, of course. I don’t think I have ever taken an Amtrak train when it was not late actually. While on the train, we discovered that on the Snapchat map, our bitmoji’s were also on a train. Morgan did an intense dot to dot and I did a few spot the differences puzzles. We got to Chicago around 12:40; the train had to slow down a few times because of hazards on the tracks.
Once we got to Union Station, we took the hallway that lead to the CTA buses and bought Ventra day pass cards for just $10 each. We took a bus from Union Station to Water Tower Place.
When we got there, we made a beeline to the restroom where Morgan pumped and I took pictures in the mirror. We needed something quick for lunch and decided on Food Life. We were kind of confused by this at first. It looks like an upscale food court and it kind of is, but with a twist. Before entering the food court, the host assigns you a “re-charge” card and a table. Each individual must have their own re-charge card. With the card you can go anywhere in Food Life, you simply give them the card, you do not use cash or a credit card. You can use the card multiple times at multiple places within Food Life, if you wish. Then once you are done eating, you pay at the cash register on your way out. You can combine multiple re-charge cards onto one transaction, if you want.
We looked around Food Life and both ended up choosing to eat at M Burger, which also has an order window outside Food Life, so we actually didn’t need to go through all of the trouble to enter Food Life, but oh well. I got a double bacon cheeseburger with the M Sauce and cheese fries. Morgan got a turkey burger and fries. We were both very pleased with lunch and especially the M Sauce.
We did however have to eat very quickly because we got our food around 1:40 and the show we were going to see started at 2:00. So, we scarfed our delicious food down, then headed downstairs to Broadway Playhouse where Friends: The Musical Parody was playing. We got to the theater just in time.
Friends: The Musical Parody is supposed to celebrate and poke fun at the beloved show about 20-something characters living in New York City in the 1990s. Morgan and I both looooooove the TV show Friends and were excited to see what this parody would be like.
The first act of the show was great; Morgan and I turned to each other multiple times to say how spot on the female characters were. We both loved the final number of the first half which was adeptly entitled “Pivot.” There were some things that we did not like though. The musical’s interpretation of Richard, Monica’s older boyfriend, we thought was just a little much, they pushed it too far.
During the intermission, we talked about what we hoped to see in the second half. We said there had been no mention of Ben, Ross’ son, or Unagi. Both were mentioned in the second act. During the second act Marcel, Ross’ monkey, finally made an appearance. I thought the musical’s interpretation of this was a little much. It again just went a little too far.
Overall though the show was great. It had a minimal set and just seven actors, but it really portrayed the idiocracies of the original show. If you are any kind of Friends fan, I would definitely try to catch it while it is on tour. The tickets are very reasonable and I think it’s worth the time.
After the show, we took the l (the CTA train), over to Wrigleyville to a pop-up bar called Charm’d. This bar is decked ouuuuut for St. Patrick’s Day. There were gnomes at the door, a giant pot of gold, unicorns dancing, a golden ball pit, and that was just outside.
Inside the bar was a sight to behold. There green, white, and orange banners all around. There were green and white paper lanterns hung from the ceiling. There were leprechauns and rainbows and four leaf clovers. There was an entire room where the wall paper was made from Lucky Charm boxes.
The place was packed! It had just opened the previous day and the day we went also happened to be the day unofficial was happening. We got a table, only because some other girls were leaving, and we gobbled it up.
We decided to get a drink and snack to share. We got the Unicorn Dream Drink and mini corn dogs. Neither was disappointing. The drink was insta worthy and oh so cute and there were plenty of mini corn dogs to go around. We both decided we wanted something more though. So I ordered the Rainbow Road Milkshake and Morgan ordered a Pot O’ Gold drink. The shake came with a sparkler in it, which we were not expecting and that was super fun. The whole place just had such a good vibe, we were sad to leave.
We did have to go though, because it was time for our train. We boogied back to Union Station via the l again and made it just as the line was moving to board the train. The train seemed to be on time, but then the power went out on the train, when we were just 40 minutes from home. We kept moving for about 5 minutes, then the train came to a complete standstill. We sat in the dark on the train for thirty minutes or so, and then we were off again. However, we were never bored during this time because there were some CHARACTERS on the train, including one lady who thought she was stuck in the bathroom and even pulled the emergency switch to alert a conductor. It turned out she was just turning the wrong lock.
Overall, I think the day can best be summed up with a quote from Janice herself. "I gotta buy a vowel because O-m-g." And we only got home about 30 minutes late.
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