a curious uni kid takes on 'merica: Chicago...(baby!)

For all intents and purposes every time I say 'Chicago', you have to imagine an enthusiastic voice saying 'Baby!' after it. That's the way it's gotta be. Before I start chatting about our WILEY adventure in Illinois, I've reached (amazingly) over 1,000 page views for my blog, and I've noticed (by checking out the 'weekly statistics report' on the admin page, I know, cool) that there has been a spike in peering curious kids lately, and I have not brought to the table a quality-viewing, well-worth-reading, utterly-hilarious, worth-missing-lecture-for update on my life for a while. So for that I apologise. I ran down the hall to Bridget's room last night, burst through the door to inform her that my blog had indeed 'gone viral' with all the views. I literally ran a decent distance to tell her that. That means that I find it to be pretty exciting news. So thank you :)

Yay, so Chicago! Me, Bridge and Annie irritated our sleeping roommates at 3.30am on Friday morning, to leave for the airport. Chicago was one of those places that I have always wanted to go to, so I was absolutely estatic. We got a cab, but Annie wasn't there so we jumped in and got the cab to drive to her apartment (another block away). Four in the morning, still dark, a bit of traffic around, and I stuck my head out the window, eyes wide, tongue out, hair flapping wildly as the wind whipped my face. The cab roaring down Huntington Ave, I finally spied Annie and she dropped her luggage in fright and laughter at me...looking like that...confronting her. She still claims to this day that I looked like a shaggy labrador. So I've created that name for myself. Sad thing is, you can picture it.

We were all super pumped up and excited for our CHICAGO BABY trip, we flew from Boston to Philadelphia, and then from Philly to Chicago. Little experience with Philadelphians is that, they are exceptionally nice! We sort of caused a bit of a scene, hustling around the airport, me looking like I'd been doped up on drugs because I was so happy, and someone was taking pictures. A lot of pictures. We got breakfast, and one thing that surprises me about Americans is there exceptional option of choices. You'd think that'd be normal for a sandwich or something but SERIOUSLY. There's 5 or 6 different bagel types, you ask for egg and it's "Egg whites? Egg yolks? Scrambled? Mix of both?" After you've sorted out your salad, you ask for bacon, and then you ask for a coffee, and they say, "Hot?" Like coffee's supposed to be cold mate?! True though, I've known people to ask for coffee at places around town and they get an iced coffee by default. You have to reassure the server that it's hot coffee you're after. Just so you know. Next time you're in Philedelhpia. Oh, and when we finally succeeded in paying $3.95 for our exhaustive breakfast ordeal, we got handed our food and were told to "Praise the Lord!"

First impressions of Chicago...it's awesome. Cigar smokers are on every corner, jazz music in the air - black guys play the saxophone and clarinet on street corners in shady downtown. It's a fairly glamorous city, different to Boston...more hip, sort of. There you go, I've said 'hip' again.

We caught a bus to our hotel...yes...a four star hotel. I know what you're thinking; Caty, go back to school. Stop taking long and extended holidays in glamorous cities with four star hotels. But the thing is, we booked online, a week before. So we got this 'last minute deal' and got a really good price on a usually-very-expensive-per-night-hotel. SO it's not so bad. We paid what we would in a hostel...for much better accommodation. Sometimes life is good.

We're still to head to NYC in a couple of weeks, but I would say (from my limited knowledge) that Chicago lies somewhere in between NYC and Boston...in terms of city life

Oh, but we originally went to the WRONG hotel, that was extremely glamourous, and people were looking at us like 'you don't belong here...' and then they couldn't find our booking on their system. Cause we were in the wrong place. Yeah, that was fun.

I love this one cause you can see the 'Chicago' sign in the background

Millennium Park

But nonetheless, after we freshened up, it was 10.30am (time difference) so we left for the day to explore the city. Now here's where you, dear readers, can feast your eyes on the splendid photos of a world so carefree and enjoyable if you think about me being there and you being...not there, you may break your keyboard like the angry German kid on Youtube.

The world famous BEAN! This was the new Moose Brooks for me...

From inside...

I found out later it's actually called The Cloud or something....but to me it will always be the BEAN, the world famous, absolutely breathtaking, monumental, BEAN.

This is what I had waited for.

Everyone was doing this...not just us. We weren't the only ones.

Also, another thing, in terms of eating trends, we've had pumpkin chai lattes (in the spirit of Thankgiving, you know) which are actually tremendously yummy, but refused the offer of biscuits drowned in (yes, the description said 'drowned in') sausage gravy. These waitresses got annoyed at us because we didn't tip enough (apparently) and they marched back to our table and stood over us as we forked out more money to pay them!

Pavilion

Making a wish.

So blooming happy to be alive

Buckingham Fountain

We were walking downtown by the theatre district, lattes in hand, shopping bags from Macy's in the other, walking with linked arms (we had our makeup done, resulting in horrendous credit card purchases of MAC makeup for me. My credit card has smoke coming off it. I've spent so much money in Chicago...with the only justifiable excuse I come summon was, 'Chicago...baby..?')and this black woman sitting on the sidewalk called out to us, asking how long we'd all been modelling for. We had to laugh. Annie requested that I put that little tidbit on the blog. I swear she did.

Buckingham Fountain

My favourite Chicago photo so far :)

...or maybe this one

No this one takes the cake for the fave

Michigan Lake folks

The day in Chicago was blissful...it was definately worth missing school for. We thought we'd be exhausted, but we headed out for dinner, a show and fancy cocktails. Improvisation is a world renowned theatre genre, and Chicago Improv Theatre created it. Bridge does it at home, and given my amateur acting past, we were keen. So we booked tickets to that, and we got into the bar and ordered drinks all night without being carded, which was cool. The show was hilarious - the actors were really talented and we met a few locals. We stayed longer than we thought (!) considering we had been up for like 23 hours by that stage. But you know...Chicago Baby!