A very busy Saturday - part 2

Continuing from our drive past Carl and Sue's first apartment complex (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/08/a-very-busy-saturday-part-1.html), we headed to Russell's Barbeque...

The building looked freshly painted, and there were a number of cars in the lot...

Carl remembers coming to Russell's with his dad and mom -- he was surprised that the line was not extending outside the doors as it would have been when he was a kid...

The front of the building

Menu of BBQ items -- we got a Roast Beef and a Smoked BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich along with French Fries...

Then we cut them both in half so we could each try both. Carl liked both equally, but I think I slightly preferred the pulled pork (maybe because it was also smoked).

Then we drove to Oakbrook Center -- the largest outdoor shopping mall in the world when it opened in 1962, and still the second largest mall in the Chicago area.

Carl remembered the open areas between the stores having plantings and flowers and fountains...

We found some plantings, but not as many fountains as he recalled.

Flower arch photo op

Some of the plantings...

There were a few fountains in this area, but not as many nor as impressive as he recalled.

As we were walking through, we saw a store named "Hotel Chocolat" (https://www.hotelchocolat.com/) -- as chocolate lovers, we couldn't pass by without checking it out...

They had a young lady with a tray containing one of their specialty chocolates for us to sample -- it was quite decadent (though too many other flavors in the sample for my taste -- I like **chocolate**!!!).

They had a "Chocolate Love Match" survey that you could take in the store . I completed it and found that my "chocolate love match" is...

Yep, that sounds right!

If you want to find your chocolate love match too, it can be found here: https://www.hotelchocolat.com/uk/love-match-quiz.html, but you do need to give them a first name and an email address to get your results (though they don't send anything to your email, so maybe you can just give a fake email!).

Carl chatted with the young lady going around with the tray of chocolates -- he told her that he has been retired over 10 years and nothing has tempted him to return to work until he saw her job. She said that a side benefit is that they can have all the chocolates that want to eat! Now I'm worried that Carl is going to want to go back to work! But, I figure that the company would only employ him for a few days before they found out that he was costing them more in chocolates consumed than the job is worth!!!