Shopping trips in Chicago can cost a pretty penny. Shopping options such as upscale boutiques and specialty shops offer luxury accessories including home furnishings and designer clothes and shoes. Several of these are available on the Magnificent Mile, which stretches along north Michigan Avenue from Oak Street to the Chicago River, reports ChicagoTraveler.com. Jewelers such as Van Cleef and Arpels as well as Tiffany also offer many pricey options to Chicago shoppers on Michigan Avenue.
Other popular stores in the vicinity include La Perla, a very high-end Italian lingerie producer on Michigan Avenue, as well as Michigan Avenue’s Neiman Marcus, where you might come across a $4,000 Prada leather tote, according to Chicagomag.com in 2010. If you’re looking for expensive shoes, consider a $675 pair of platinum Givenchy stilettos from the store Josephine on North Wells Street. You can even participate in a shopping tour of the city through the service Urban Shop Guide, where you can be chauffeured in a luxury vehicle to shop at trendy boutiques across the city.
If you’re an avid sports fan, buying tickets to a Chicago Cubs or Chicago Bears game can be expensive. For example, you could choose a platinum-level bullpen box seat at a Chicago Cubs baseball game for $225 or a dugout seat for $315 as of September 2010. In addition, tickets at a Chicago Bears football game could cost $365 per game. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for the best seat in the house at a Chicago Bears game, consider a single-game suite, which cost $16,000 per game and required a $500 refundable security deposit in September 2010. If you're interested in the single-game suites, you should purchase tickets for these as soon as they go on sale, which was in July 2010 for the 2010 season that stretched from August to December.
Dining in Chicago offers a wide variety of exciting choices that can add up quickly. Take, for example, Alinea Restaurant on North Halsted Street, which features delectable American menu items such as king crab with rhubarb and fennel as well as lobster or lamb. A multi-course menu tasting experience could cost you around $185 by the end of the night, as of September 2010. However, the restaurant operated by Chef Grant Achatz was named the best restaurant in North America in 2010 by the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards, reports CBS Broadcasting Inc. in Chicago. If you’re looking for cultural food at a high price and quality, Fogo de Chao provides Brazilian grilled and skewered meats in an all-you-can-eat format on North Michigan Avenue. Dinner there in September 2010 was about $50 a person, while lunch totaled about $33 a person. In addition, Tru on North Saint Clair Street offers French cuisine, where a three-course meal in September 2010 totaled $95. Meanwhile, collection tastings at Tru ranged from $110 to $145, and a tasting of sturgeon caviars reached $275 in September 2010.