Chicaaaago!

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Bus ride was long, another 24 hours.. but I had my own seat for most of it, only had to share for a few hours so that was awesome.

I was last in line for border security, I’m usually one of the last to get off the bus every time it stops, because I have to reorganise my carry on luggage all the time. So border security seemed to take a while for a few people, but seemed the longest for me. The man had to fill out my visa waiver, then I had to pay for the visa waiver, then he had to do all the usual fingerprints & photos, then scan my bags. He got me to open my bag, because he thought my curling iron looked like a tripod. What I would do with a tripod anyway is beyond me! So I finally got on the bus, feeling like a bit of a criminal because people had had to wait so long for me.

After all the effort off unloading and reloading the bus, the Detroit Greyhound station was only 5 minutes away, so we all had to unload again anyway. People think that US customs are scary, but gosh, the lady at the Greyhound ticket counter was on one hell of a power trip. Only talking to people in short toned, one worded sentences.. Welcome to America! I tried being nice to her, and it seemed to work as she called me “young lady” all the time, whereas she just grunted at the other people. I had issues with my luggage, as the rules get a whole lot stricter once you’re in the US than they are in Canada, you’re only allowed one bag under and one bag as carry on. I had one (overweight) bag under and two carry ons. So first she told me that I’d have to get rid of one of my carry ons. Fine, I could probably re-pack things. Then she weighed my suitcase and told me that it was 9 pounds overweight and that I’d have to get rid of some stuff. Ummm.. I have to get rid of a carry on AND 9 pounds of luggage? I asked her what my options were, and she finally told me I could pay excess baggage fees. Fine. Let’s go with that, I’m not throwing a way half of my stuff right now! I hate it when people just say things without elaborating.. “You’ve got too many bags, get rid of one. Your bag is too heavy, get rid of 9 pounds” Give me some options lady, sheesh! So I paid $22 in excess baggage. Not too bad, but it will get expensive once I pay it every time I take the bus in the US! Will have to get crafty with my luggage I think, or *shock horror* get rid of some stuff. That will be hard!

Arrived, checked in and the girls next to me at reception desk were checked into the same room as me. Friends! I thought.. Not so. They weren’t the friendliest, one was alright but the other answered me with short, sharp answers (noticing a pattern?). Then five minutes later was so fascinated when she found out I was from Australia. Weird. They were here only for one night for a book signing anyway, so they were in and out anyway. Another girl from America was here for an interview for law school, and she seemed cool, but I didn’t see her much either because she had things to do.

After the long bus ride all I wanted to do was sleep, but I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea. So I had a much-needed shower, fluffed around with all my belongings, messing up my area of the room within 5 minutes of being there, called mum and spoke to her for a bit, went on the internet and then decided I was desperately hungry. 7/11 was close so I went with mac & cheese, good old American classic. I had an early night cause I was buggared.

The next morning I woke up early and had the free breakfast, ahhh I haven’t been in a hostel with free breakfast since Vancouver! Love it!
The hostel had organised a walking tour of Hyde Park, so I decided to go on that. When I first heard Hyde Park I thought it was going to be a huge open space with trees and grass, maybe a few sculptures or buildings. Snow Patrol have a DVD that is live from Hyde Park, so I thought that was it. Turns out that Hyde Park is a neighbourhood in Chicago, one of the first in it’s history, and the home to Barrack Obama. The Hyde Park I was thinking about is in England. So we walked around and found out a lot about the history of the neighbourhood, went through a few churches, looked at the architecture of the area, and went through Chicago University. Such a gorgeous campus! It was Summer holidays so there weren’t many people around, but it looked just like uni campuses look in the movies. Pretty buildings, big grassy areas, the lecture hall that we saw inside was all old and beautiful. Gorgeous.
We went for lunch at a little pizza place where they wore shirts with “Obama Eats Here”. It reminded me of one of the Vietnamese noodle restaurants on Swanston st that has something along the lines of “Bill Clinton ate here and had 2 bowls of noodle soup, how many can you handle?” written on their window. Good food though, I had a vegie pizza and a banana choc pecan milkshake. Delicioso!
After lunch we all went our separate ways. I went to a free museum - The Oriental Institute. It was awesome! They had all kinds of Egyptian artefacts - mummies, pharoahs, ancient scripts, it was really cool, and free!

There were a few cool people on the tour, and I ended up hanging out with two of them afterwards. I was supposed to go to a comedy gig that the hostel had organised an outing to, but got caught up talking to them and missed it. Their names were Simona and Petra and they were from Holland. They both had cool accents, and Simona in particular sounded a little like Goldmember. After lots of talking and a little pool, we decided to go get some drinks at a nearby bar. I got a long island and they got cosmopolitans. The bartender recommended I try the long island with this watermelon stuff instead of coke. Oh my god, so so good.. Even better than cranberry juice! Too bad I don’t know what the watermelon stuff was called!

The next day I decided to go for a walk down the Magnificent Mile. The Magnificent Mile is a strip of shops, Macy’s, Gucci, Tiffany’s, Bloomingdale’s, etc etc. On the way there I went through Millenium Park, which has this awesome stainless steel statue of a bean. Sounds stupid but was actually possibly the greatest sculpture I have ever seen. I loved it so much because each time you looked at it you saw a different reflection, whether it be of yourself or of the city. I just loved it. Millennium Park also has a stage where they house free concerts and movies every night, and a big water fountain, where images of people appear and then spurt water at the kids underneath. Hard to explain, but pretty cool. I stopped off at a chocolate shop called Ghirardelli that people had recommended and got a peanut butter fudge sundae. Oh my god, kill me now. So much chocolate, peanut butter and ice cream can’t be good for you. It was tasty though! I went into the Hershey’s shop, just to get a photo really.. Hershey’s chocolate is pretty foul. I walked all along the Magnificent Mile without spending tooooo much money, good work Kirsty! Along the way they have various sculptures and things to look at, including all these dresses made out of weird things like plastic cups and hotel keys. Pretty cool.

I then walked up to the beach and sat there for a while. Chicago is not on the coast of America, so there is no ocean. It is, however, on Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan is beyond huge. You look out and you wouldn’t know that you’re not looking at the ocean. It goes forever. I had signed up for a free tour of a museum with the hostel, and the Dutch girls were going to be there. So I set off back to the hostel to meet them. Before I knew it it was 5pm and I had to meet up with everyone at 5:20, so I knew I had no chance of getting there. Petra has my email address though so hopefully I hear from them. I decided to go check out Navy Pier, Chicago’s number 1 tourist attraction. It’s basically a pier with a lot of bars and restaurants, a ferris wheel, kids rides, indoor garden, IMAX, boat rides etc etc. I bought a ticket for the Shanghai Cirque, so chilled out on the pier til then. The show was pretty good, miles better than this year’s Cirque Du Soleil. They did all the usual things you’d expect from a Chinese circus.. Spinning plates on sticks, contortionism, getting 12 or so girls onto one bike, hula hoops, juggling, etc etc. It was really good. My ticket was only $21 and I was in the fourth row too, so that was awesome. After the show I walked back to the hostel via the Buckingham Fountain, which they apparently light up at night. I had obviously gotten there too late, so it wasn’t lit up. Back to the hostel it was. I had probably walked 12-15kms that day so was absolutely beggared, and slept like a baby that night.

The next day I went shopping and did laundry, nothing overly exciting! It was the night of the opening ceremony though, so I asked the new Australian girl in my room if she wanted to watch it at a bar with me, and she did. Awesome. We went to the same bar that I went to with the Dutch girls, bcause the waitress the other night had told us that they would be playing it. There was a White Sox baseball game on though, so that dominated most of the bar, and they had the Olympics playing on two Tvs, with the volume off. Le Sigh. Only in America would a baseball game take over like that. I guess if I was in Melbourne there would be more screens of AFL.


I got on my watermelon long islands again, and Alexis had half orange juice half club sodas. Way to make me feel like an alco! Alexis was in town for a 3 day Harry Potter convention. Weird. I like Harry Potter, but wouldn’t dress up like a character and go talk about it for three days. Each to their own though! The opening ceremony was awesome, just wish their was sound so I knew what was going on. It was kinda weird that the countries all came out in an order that I couldn’t work out.. Chinese order obviously. Australia was third last, which was a new concept. On the American screening they showed George Bush a lot, obviously. What I thought was poor taste though, was that they panned to him when Iraq came out. Obviously with no sound I don’t know what the commentators were saying, but yeah, probably unnecessary.. You’re supposed to forget about this stuff at the Olympics! I didn’t expect it, but they showed Kevin Rudd when Australia came out.. Yaaayyyyy! Our uniforms were alright I thought, better than the god awful one we had a few years ago. Even Canada’s was better than the ones they sell in The Bay. I haven’t watched much of the Olympics since, America shows a lot of beach volleyball, and other events that they are in, obviously. Not a lot of Australian coverage. When I last looked though, we were fifth on the medal count! Go you good thing!

The next morning I was off on another walking tour with the hostel, this time in downtown Chicago. It was cool, learnt a bit about architecture and the history of Chicago. I saw the Buckingham Fountain in the daylight, and found out that it was the one they shot in front of for the opening credits for Married:With Children. I was talking to a nice boy from England a lot of the time, he was cool but I forget his name. He liked Snow Patrol and Arrested Development, so that excited me.

I then did a bit more shopping, and that night went down to Navy Pier to watch the Fireworks. You’d think I’d be over fireworks by now, having seen them in Quebec City & Montreal, but I so wasn’t.. I love them so much. I decided to get a spot semi early and watch the sunset. This was nice and relaxing until a girl about my age and her father and grandfather sat down next to me. She was so annoying, everything she said made me want to punch her. I obviously would never do that, so I listened to my iPod instead. That almost drowned her out. The fireworks were pretty good, but nothing compared to those I’d seen at the Frieworks competition in the week before.

The next day was my last full day and night in Chicago. I went shopping again (We really need to get Old Navy in Australia, it’s awesome!) and went to the Cultural Centre for a Marilyn Monroe exhibition, which was once again free. It was cool, lots of different pictures and paintings and sculptures of her. Marilyn was so gorgeous, I wish I looked like her. We can all dream. Inside the same building there are two Tiffany stained glass domes that have just been restored. They were pretty nice! I tried Garrett popcorn, popcorn that has made it onto Oprah’s list of Favourite Things. Everytime I walked past one of the stores there was a line out the doors, so I had never bothered. Today I walked past and there was a store with hardly any line, so I thought I’d give it a go. I got the caramel macadamia popcorn, and at first bite didn’t know what the fuss was about. Then after a few more pieces I was hooked. Good popcorn. I also tried Chicago-style pizza from Giordano’s.. a Chicago delicacy apparently. I’m pretty sure this pizza is what they’re talking about when they refer to pizza pies, as that’s exactly what it is. The crust in 2-3 inches high, and the filling is inside, like a quiche I guess. I got a small cheese pizza, because you have to pay for extra toppings and I wanted all the toppings, but didn’t want to pay a hideous amount of money for them. I was waiting for about 45 minutes for the pizza, so I think the girl forgot to put my order through or something. They upsized it to a medium for free. 2 slices and you’re pretty much done. It was nice, just a LOT of cheese! I bought another suitcase to deal with my excess baggage issue. I read on the website that it’s only $5 if you have an extra bag, as opposed to the $22 I had to pay for the 9 pounds I was over by. Deal. Means I can buy more things too! So I went back to the hostel and repacked everything.

That night I went to the Sears Tower. For 20+ years the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world. The view was really nice, the lake and the buildings, the sun was setting too, which is always my favourite time to visit an observation deck! I also finally got to see the Buckingham Fountain lit up. It was pretty! I had an early night, as I know how hard it is for me to get out by 11 at hotels, because I always have to repack.

I checked out at about 10, an hour earlier than necessary, and went in search of a segway tour. Chicago is huge on their segways, their police and security guards ride them, there are heaps of tours on them, and there are even shops that sell only segways. They look like fun, and Gob on Arrested Development rides one, so I thought I’d have a go. I had left it too late, as the tours were all booked out. One day! I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo though, a FREE zoo (notice how many things are free in Chicago? It’s wonderful!). The zoo was great, the had zebras and monkeys and red pandas and kangaroos and penguins and POLAR BEARS! Most definitely my favourite.. I spent a lot of time watching them. After the zoo I went and sat in a park for a while. The park was covered with clovers, and I felt like Alice in Wonderland lying in them.
I then went back into the city, took a few photos of the Chicago sign made famous by the musical, then went into a Borders store. I spent a good 2- 2 ½ hours there, I read a tattoo book and a magazine. I felt a little dirty doing it, because I guess I should have bought them, but everyone does it. Good way to kill a couple of hours too! I then headed back to the hostel and then eventually to the Greyhound, bound for Toronto. I had planned to do Boston & Washington, but couldn’t get a hostel room in either place, so changed my plans up a little.

So all in all, Chicago was awesome. So much free stuff to do, a lot of sculptures and cool architecture. I would definitely go back because there is a fair amount I didn’t see. I didn’t go to Harpo studios, which I wanted to do. Not because I love Oprah necessarily, but because it was basically all I knew about Chicago before going there. I think it would be a pretty liveable city too. The weather was always amazing, not too hot, but the sun was always shining. There were only a few drops of rain on one day while I was there, but apparently there was a big storm just before I got there. Good timing!
There are a lot of African Americans in Chicago, and they all, especially the women, live up to the stereotypes with the way they talk and act.. It was interesting to watch, for sure!

Til next time

Kirsty xx

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