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Published: June 11th 2010
another early start as today we were driving from cleveland to our final contiki destination of chicago, illonois.
we drove for about 2 hrs before stopping at a shop called 'meijer' (pronounced like our myer). we stayed here for about half an hour. justin had told us it was like an upper class version on walmart but were pretty sure it was just the same.
we got on the bus and drove for about another 2 hours before arriving in little town for lunch. mary, mel and i decided on this place that does pasta. it was the best. they have this thing called 'the ultimate sampler', a meal for the indecisive. it has 4 different types of pasta all on one place, lasagne, spag bol, alfredo and penne bol... and comes with a bread stick.. mmm, so good.
after this we went to get some money out and discovered yet another thing making people lazier, a drive through ATM. i kid you not, you can just drive up in your car and get money out, ingenious really.
we drove for maybe another 90minutes before arriving in chicago. jerry and justin decided to take us on a city tour so we got to see some stuff before taking us to the hotel.
we had about 5hrs before we had to go for dinner so myself, mary and mel decided that seems it was such a blue sky clear day we would get off our butts (unlike most of the others) and go up to the willis tower (formerly the sears tower).
the willis tower is 103 floors high and has a glass ledge much like the CN Tower did and like our Eureka building. But the view from the top of this was Amazing. and the glass ledge was so much better than the one on the CN tower.
some facts about this willis tower.
because chicago's strong winds and severe temperatures can be tretcherous at those heights, engeineers designed 6 autoomatic window-washing machines to clean every window on the building. it takes 3-4 weeks to clean all the 11,500 windows.
the tower is so tall it can be seen from michigan, wisconson, indiana and of course, illinois and is over 800feet taller than the highest natural point in the state.
we spent maybe 40 or so minutes up there before making our way back down to try and find some shops as we still had some time to fill in before needing to go back to the hotel to get ready to go out.
we walked around for abit trying to find the shops, asking several people for directions as we didnt even have a map.
we found this one shop we hadnt come across before and we spent id say a good hour in there before making our way to catch the bus to the hotel.
the bus was a bad idea.
it took us about 40minutes for what would have been maybe 10minutes in a cab.
so by the time we got back to the hotel we have 40minutes to shower and get ready before we had to meet in the lobby to go to the john hancock building.
we'd seen chicago from above during the day and now it was time to see it at night.
the views from the top of this building at night are pretty unbeatable.
the view is so good that in the female toilets they dont even have a wall, the view of chicago is the way. its amazing. the lights go on forever.
we spent abit of time taking photos before making our way down and walked aabout 15minutes before we reached te first bar we were going to for the night.
because of our earlier rush we realised that the 3 of us had missed getting dinner, so we went into the gyros place next door to the pub and i had the best thing, it was called a steak sandwich and it had caramelised onions, shaved souvalaki steak and green peppers all on a bun thing, and i added some ketchup.... mmmmm. and it came with fries and a drinks.
after our meal we made our way into the pub where justin and brad we're playing 2 locals in the popular college 'sport' of beer pong.
for any one who doesnt know of this game, u basically set up 10 plastic beer cups in a triangle shape, one at each end of the table then you have to try and throw a pingpong ball into the cups at each end. each time you get one in a cup the person has to drink the 'beer' in that cup. as they wanted to be a little more hygienic they just took a gulp of beer from their mugs if they got it in, and just had water in the cups.
we stayed here for abit as th drinks were cheap and the barmaid was very generous with her shots of booze in the drinks.
we later moved on to a little bar across the road that did karaoke.
it was here that the group got messy. the drinks were flowing and so were the terrible voices but, as many of us were leaving the tour in chicago with many of the others continuing on to LA it was kind of a goodbye night, and everyone got in the spirit.
after the bar had kicked us out and we'd talked up our gyros so much the group headed across there after for some food.
when i finally got into bed and switched off the light it was 4:30am.
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Carl
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Did you sing anything on the karaoke hun?! "Land Down Under" again?! x