Breakfast in the city

We got up, and with sorrow checked-out of our suite. We left the bags at the bell stand and walked back to the visitor's center to get a train pass. At the visitor's center, we got a tip on a great breakfast spot, Tempo. Tempo's located on the northern end of downtown on State st. The place was packed with people (an obvious local favorite). We got a monte cristo sandwich and some pancakes which were both great. The orange juice is fresh squeezed and fantastic.
After Tempo, we walked over to the Hancock building and took the fastest elevator in the US to the observatory on the 94th floor. The view of Chicago is quite stunning from up there.
After the observatory, we decided we'd go to the Museum of Contemporary Art and then take a train to Eli's Cheesecake Factory. The museum had a art of rock n' roll exhibit which was decent yet slightly obscure to me (late 60s, early 70s bands mostly). The highlight was the store which had some very cool stuff (wind-up sushi, LED xmas trees, vinyl albums pressed into bowls and cut into coasters). I got a little caught up in it and we didn't get out of there until almost 3:30. We knew the Cheesecake factory was closing at 5, so we decided we'd just head back to the hotel and ask for a closer place to get Eli's. On the way back, we stopped in a couple stores. Jadine bought a pair of shoes she liked.
We grabbed the bags from the Omni and headed down a couple blocks to our next hotel, the InterContinental. Along the way we stopped in at a busy popcorn store and picked up 2 bags (macademia caramel and cashew caramel -- the plan was to bring one home, but neither bag was sealed, so now we're stuck with chowing down on this stuff all week).
We checked in and got an OK room, decent size and LCD panel tv. The conference is here so that's the main reason we're here.
We met up with a coworker who is also attending the conference and headed out to dinner at the Capital Grille (rated #1 steakhouse in Chicago on citysearch). I had the Delmonico (ribeye) and Jadine had the surf & turf (filet and crab legs). The food was OK, nothing really special, and overpriced, but the service was good (Dan Aykroyd).
After dinner we headed to Rush st (recommended by our waiter) and found a pub there. We had a drink there before calling it a night and headed back to our hotel (one mile taxi ride $6).