International Sandwich Day

Yesterday seemed to have a theme to it – at least for Uri. We started the morning in Ann Arbor.

As usual, I woke up much earlier than Uri, and so went to a Starbucks across the street to use the internet to do things like tell you guys what we’ve been up to and plan the day, including things like book a hotel for our next destination – Chicago! (more on that later).

When Uri got up and ate “breakfast” – leftovers from the dish I ordered at Al Ameer- grilled pita stuffed with ground meet, tomatoes and pine-nuts (Sandwich #1: Middle East). I was ready for a mid-morning snack, we went back to the same place we ate dinner to have something, mainly because we knew we could get internet there and in other places we’ve been having problems due to some technical difficulties. Since we’ve been there twice, I will mention it by name – it’s a place call Zingerman’s. It’s very famous in Ann Arbor, and very good, it’s basically a deli – lots of bread, very good cheese section, and lot’s of salads and traditional deli meats. Special just because it’s rare to find places that everything they do do, they do well.

Uri was using the internet, and I was looking through the menu that I found by complete chance, and I noticed that they make their own corned-beef. From that point, I knew what Uri was having for lunch. I ordered to go a sandwich for Urii, and some gazpacho I had been eyeing since the night before for me, and off we went to cross the lower Michigan peninsula.

The trip was supposed to take something like 5 hours, we did have a pit stop planned along the way at the 4 hour mark. Geeky remark of the post: The pit stop was in Michigan, which follows EST, so the GPS told us we would be there at 3 pm, when we looked at when we would get to Chicago, it also said 3 pm, since Chicago is CST. Anyway, we stopped in a rest area for lunch (Sandwich #2: Jewish American) and then continued on driving. The road took us through Kalamazoo, and we toyed with the idea of stopping and asking people if they know where we can find a kazoo, but we ended up just driving on, . Stopping at a park called Warren Dunes National Park off the shores of Lake Michigan. I got a recommendation to go there from a friend, and thought there were hiking options, it turned out it’s mainly a beach, but we still had a good time, we did hike up a sand dunes and in the forests despite there not being the usual extremely regulated trails.

It was a fun, much needed break from driving. On the road again, this time destination: Chicago. Our plan was to get to the hotel, take a shower and then go for pizza.

As I alluded to before, I had booked the hotel the same day on a site called Hotwire.com. Wow! What a deal we got, judging by the location and décor, we probably saved something like $100 a night on the room. It’s a funny room though – it’s probably the smallest room we’ve ever stayed in, but also the most fashionably decorated.

Then it was off to pizza – I love deep dish pizza so I was really looking forward to it. I will digress again to say that our list of recommended places to eat in Chicago includes over 10 places. The #1 pizza, it turned out, was in the suburbs – so, we drove to the suburbs. And guess what?!? It was closed! Not as in shut down, but as it not open Mondays and Tuesdays. So we started calling other places on the list – the next 2 were also closed on Mondays, so the next option was a place called Al’s Italian Beef that specializes in beef sandwiches that are dipped “au ju” aka in the juices of the beef (Sandwich #3: Italian American). We went to the original, on Taylor street and it was pretty good, not as greasy as I thought and very tasty. More tomorrow… good night!