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Published: June 24th 2008
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We spent the next two drives just driving, stopping off to find motels in Sioux Falls and then Madison. Then on the Thursday we had the short drive into Chicago to do, this should have been short anyway- 2 hours according to the map! Ofcourse the map didnt take into account how bad the traffic would be, in the end it took us about 4 to get into the city centre. We'd had no real issues finding motels anywhere so far so we decided not to book anywhere here but struggled to find any in the city (apart from expensive looking hotels) so we headed to the visitor info to get some advise and hopefully another coupon book. Only problem with our plan was the lack of parking near the visitor info so we ended up parking miles away and had to walk. We did manage to get a coupon book but unfortuntly none of the motels where right for us. So we asked for advise and were told we needed to go back the way we came (grrrrrr) to the airport where there are lots of motels, by this time we were starting to get a little fustrated especially
as we new the traffic going out of the city was just as bad as going in. So after spending another hour or so in the car we found the airport, but no motels- we had two maps but neither matched up to the other which really didnt help matters. We ended up taking loads of wrong turns and even went to arrivals at the airport by mistake. By about 6 oclock we were getting REALLY fed up and were considering not bothering with chicago at all (thats how stressed we were) when suddenly we saw a blue flag and bright lights flashing $43 dollars a night, at this point i think i remember Gra doing an ilegal u turn and racing into the carpark. It was the same chain of motel we stayed in in madison so new it would be ok (actually its a bit more like a hotel than motel). The guy on reception told us there were no more rooms left at the $43 price and wanted to charge us $70 so we started to walk out when he "realised the computer had made a mistake" and actually there was a cheap room available, funny that!
The room turned out to be really nice with a huge king size bed, and we even got free cookies and milk at 7pm (so just in time). Over our subway dinner we decided we really should give Chicago a go and planned on getting the train into the city the following day. This was definatly the most stressful and fustrating day of our america trip.
After a nice big breakfast (where you also take enough bagels and fruit to have for lunch or dinner later- sneaky, some may say stingy but we dont care) we got the hotels shuttle bus to the train station which was in the airport. We decided that we would head to the science and industry museum first. To do this we had to take another train which was pretty simple but we hadnt quite realised how far out of town the museum was. We ended up going through what was like the ghetto, a really dodgy and to be honest quite scary area. We new that when we arrived we'd have to walk about 10 mins so were really hoping that the area would get a bit nicer. It didnt. We
got off the train at our stop, turned around and got back on another tran going back into the city. We decided we werent that bothered about seeing another museum anyway, although it was a good insight to what other parts of america are like. So by the time we got back into the city it was gone 1 and our stomachs were growling so we went in search of lunch. We decided that today we were going to treat ourselves and actually have a sit down lunch rather than just a subway or mcdonalds and ofcourse when you're in chicago you've got to have a Chicago Pizza. We found a pizza place easily (turned out we had a $2 coupon too, maybe our luck was changing!), to say it was packed was an understatement so we had to wait about half an hour but it was soooo worth it. We hadnt realised (well i hadnt anyway) that Chicagos famous pizza was actually a pie, so think a steak pie but instead of steak and gravy you have just cheese inside and then tomato sauce ontop of the pastry. Ive never eaten something so filling in my life, Gra couldnt
even finish the last piece. Very good pizza but to be honest i think we'll be sticking to Pizza Hut in the future. After being fed and watered we had a walk around some of the shops and saw some of the things you have to see when you go to chicago- ie nbc tower. Then to end the day we went for a walk around Millennium Park. This is a Park which is an award-winning center for art, music, architecture and landscape design and covers 24.5 acres. Among its main features is the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion , "the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States". There was actually a free concert playing that night, but rain clouds were heading for us so we decided to give it a miss. Other features included The Bean which is actually called Cloud Gate which as you can see was really cool, and the Crown Fountain. So overall a pretty good day in the windy city (if we forget the train ride to the museum). We got back to the hotel in time for cookies and milk and spent the rest of the evening planning where
we would spend the next 2 weeks as we'd managed to somehow get ahead of schedule!
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