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Day 1 Home to Chicago - 10th May
The day began very early,
4am to be exact. I would love to say that we were bright eyed and bushy tailed, but that would be lieing, we both woke up having only had 4 and half hours sleep as unfortunately our competitive addiction to the Xbox and excitement kept us up till
11:30pm. We had a very smooth journey down to Heathrow although we did plan on making sandwiches for the journey we forgot. Fortunately Michaels parents offered to buy us breakfast when we got to Heathrow. And so our final mean on English solid for three months was a traditional English fried breakfast! There wasn't to much to be done in airport duty free pretty standard stuff really there was chance for a quick lye down with a view to have ing a sleep as we were shattered but the lady on the tanoy had other ideas as she persistently shouted information every 5 minutes. The highlight of this part of the journey was to see a girl roughly aged 5 that had the best monobrow I had ever seen, even better than Chelsea's jose bosingua! The plane was good we got good seats far enough away from the toilet to not be woken up every five minutes and we had no annoying crying baby's children kicking the seat or large smelly people any where near to disturb us so you could say the holiday had kicked off on the right foot the only issue I had with the plane was the inflight tv system was limited and was only played in slots and wasn't immediately available. Stupidly I did not sleep at all on the flight I got way to into the films Michael caught forty winks. We arrived in Chicago O'here airport
at 3pm chicago time where our luck changed. We queued up to get through customs for over an hour and a half in an environment that would test even the best friendships It was a large badly air conditioned room with many rude, bossy and unhelpful security personnel we had both eaten two very small inflight meals and I could barely remember what the English breakfast we had in the morning tasted like. We were surrounded by very sweaty smell people that apparently had no spatial awareness skill as they continually got to close to us making us feel breathless and clammy I was at breaking point and I think if one more trolley bag clipped the back of Michael's heals it would have been the last thing the owner ever did. We decided it was best not to talk to each other at all as our frustrations would easily be directed on to each other. I found this particularly hard as I throughout my entire life I have been an attention seeker and with no one to keep me occupied this was going to be one of the longest times I had ever been still and said nothing in my life. Suddenly from nowhere a lady appeared and said would the passengers from the back of the que please follow her to another set of gate unfortunately we where already a third of the way in to the long que as people from the back frantically started to leave heated mosh pit that was customs gate 23 Michael and I look at each other for a moment and starred back across towards the leaving crown beyond the many red tape queuing barriers we turned to each other once more both knowing what we were both wanting to do upon the first syllable to leave Michael's mouth we both started moving we were like a cross of Olympic athletes and SAS marines hurdling the some tape and sliding under others my bag got caught on one rope and pulled down a few sets of barriers but did not look back I could hear other passengers disgust as we scampered away but I just sore it as their jealousy of us being closer to our freedom! The next que was much smaller and in a larger room with more gates to go through and better yet air conditioned it only took 20 more minutes to get through this section not taking into account the grilling and complete invasion of privacy we where always going to have by the customs official. Finally feeling completely violated I finally managed to get to the baggage collection stage where we had been so long to get through customs our bag had been removed from the carousel and was sat waiting for us on the floor. We left the airport on the sub way after talking to a information desk and a cop both of which told us not so go to the south side or to far to the west map in hand we set off east finally arriving at Fullerton station shattered we read on the directions on the printed out sheet for the hotel to head east out of the station well I'm not being funny but who the hell carries a sodding compass with them anymore which way is East! (East is that way bro) we then walked for what seemed miles with our large back packs following the vague instructions having ask three people the street we where looking for and the direction to go the fourth finally showed us the right way as I recognised the street from google maps We arrived at the Chicago Getaway hostel
at 8:30pm Chicago time making it
2:30am uk time. We were very ready for bed we booked three nights and where shown to the room or should I say cell there were 6 bunk beds with the minimum amount of sheets on to be fair it was very clean the hostel looked friendly and nicely decorated and well beggars can't be choosers!Still getting my stuff out of my bag the lady that just checked us into the hostel came into our room and said there is a bar crawl in 30mins do we want to come, well I supposed it would be rude not to and we were both ready for a drink. After a very quick shower and change we were ready for our first night and first night out! We quickly realise we had landed on our feet lots of nice people on the bar crawl all travellers looking for a good time and we got chatting to everyone. The drinks weren't too badly priced either but the you have to take into account tips the Bain of my life to give someone extra money for something they have to do as there job anyway and not even for doing it well which is acceptable but for just doing it! Anyway we must have gone to about 6bars all with various drinks offers we tried all sorts of Chicago's own beers and largers some where very high percentages (much like special brew) and having had very little to eat it was going to my head very quickly we drank all sorts some were expensive some cheap but all where getting me pissed very quickly. A high light would deffinitely be the tall funnel which stood on our table costing 16 dollars and filling up five pints from a tap at its bottom having consumed all that it was off to the club upstairs for lots of silly dancing photo bombing and socialising what can I say it's just who we are a pair of wallys having a laugh we eventually found ourselves at another club later but did not stay for long the kebab urges were very strong and I had started to fall asleep where I stand. Sierra the lady who was in charge of the night offer to show us a burrito place near by as it is like a kebab but not it's there version and drunk food. Having sat and ate a burrito which is definitely not as good as a kebab sierra pointed us up a dark ally as our way home and got herself in a taxi we quickly made our way up the dingy street we nicknamed rape ally seeing only a friendly passing rat the size of a cat. We entered our room to a choir of snors shuffling and unrest trying to make as little noise as possible we finally got in bed pissed as farts
at 3:20am Chicago time
9:20am Uk time having had no sleep for 29+ hours!
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Mum/Linda
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Great blog guys. Making me laugh, Dad is right there is a good book in there. Keep it going. Promise I wont tell G and G....well only if I want to claim my inheritance. Ha Ha. Take care of yourselves xx