Your perfect weekend: Hyde Park

Start your day by stuffing your gut full of falafel and hummus at Nile Restaurant. Get there when it opens, because a swarm of U of C students will pack the place before noon.

Promontory Point (enter at E 55th St and S Shore Dr), a man-made peninsula that juts out into the lake, is a hot spot for weddings and tourists in the summer. But in the winter, you can walk along it in isolation and feel like you’re in a goddamned Carl Sandburg poem. It also has one of the best skyline views in the city.

A10 is the name of a road that travels through Italy and France. It’s also the name of a spectacular Hyde Park restaurant that straddles the cuisines of the two countries. Make a reservation in advance for Saturday dinner, and expect to spend a good chunk of change. But it’s worth it. 

Cap off your night by kicking it back to the analog age at Seven Ten Lanes. You’ll have to keep score by hand at the eight-lane bowling alley, which can be a bit perplexing, but always fun, after a few beers.

The Museum of Science and Industry—which you visited, what, 27 times as a kid?—still holds interest for the adult you. The historic institution is home to some of the most mind-blowing exhibits in town, from robots to a simulated coal mine.

Whether or not you’re a smoker, Hyde Park Cigars can turn you into a tobacco aficionado for an afternoon. It’s BYOB, and with more than 1,500 brands of cigars and an indoor smoking lounge, it’s a great setting to float off into a hazy, whiskey-ridden oblivion.

Just off the U. of C. campus, Jimmy’s (as it’s affectionately called by those in the know, after dearly departed original owner Jimmy Wilson) is the favored spot for the scholars to rub elbows with undergrads and working-class neighborhood regulars. Grab a cheap burger and an even cheaper beer and reminisce on a perfect weekend in Hyde Park.