The Friday Five, 4/27/18: 5 things I've been up to this week

Another busy week/weekend: I was in Chicago from last Thursday through Sunday. This week has been more of a "chill" week, though: I've had plans but haven't been running around as much, which has been nice.

Navy Pier, as seen from a boat
What I've been up to this week:
  1. Traveling. I was in Chicago for 3 days, for the first Unofficial Yelp Spring Break, and it was a lot of fun. I don't get to play "tourist" in Chicago anymore usually and we did the Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium, Skydeck (Sears/Willis Tower), and the John Hancock building, most of which was covered by CityPass which was nice ($106 for 5 attractions). We also walked a lot and ate a lot of good food, including Chicago-style pizza (Gino's East and Pizzeria Due).
  2. Cooking. I received a Hello Fresh delivery on Tuesday and I will be receiving a Home Chef delivery today. Out of the three Hello Fresh meals I received, my favorite was the steak with chimichurri sauce (yesterday's dinner), followed by the "Shake It Up" pork cutlets with sunflower seed salad (Tuesday's dinner), and the "Hot 'N Hearty" flatbread pizza (Wednesday's dinner). 
  3. Amtrak and Megabus. I've rode Amtrak before, but I think the last time was 2012, taking it from Providence, RI to NYC, for BlogHer. I booked a ticket to ride it last October, from downtown DC to BWI, but it ran 1.5 hours late and I had to forego my ticket and grab a $45 Lyft to BWI instead (I wasn't happy ...). Amtrak gave me a $18 (price of my ticket) voucher and so I used that when we went to Chicago. TL;DR, Amtrak is much more comfortable than Megabus, but Megabus is okay—our bus wasn't late and it got us home a little early as well. This was also my first time riding Megabus; we didn't have a double-decker bus, though, as advertised, which was disappointing, and the WiFi was non-existent, but it did get us from Point A to Point B.
  4. Seeing movies. I actually went to a movie screening on Tuesday (!)—for the first time since January—and I saw Tully. Check back next Friday, 5/4 for my review of that. On Wednesday, I saw Amy Schumer's I Feel Pretty, and it was unfortunately just okay ... I'd give it 2.75 out of 5 stars. I'm seeing Lean on Pete with my parents tonight, which looks good but is at Main Art (awful seats....) and I'm hoping to see the new Avengers: Infinity War tomorrow, provided that MoviePass doesn't run out of seats.
  5. Enjoying this nice weather. I brought my winter coat to Chicago and I needed it there: it was about 40-50 all weekend. It's been about 55-60 now in Michigan, though, and I hope the weather stays like this—since we had both a winter and a "Second Winter" (aka half of April, where it was even snowing out!), we definitely deserve some nice weather.
Hello Fresh ingredients for the "Shake It Up" pork cutlets

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