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We got up at 4:00am after not even 2hours sleep to get changed, throw (and by throw I mean literally) the rest of our stuff in our cases and be out the front of the hotel by 4:30am for our shuttle to La Guardia Airport.
We checked in for our 8:35am flight with Spirit Airways to Chicago then got some food before boarding. I fell asleep very quickly due to the serious lack of sleep and woke up just before landing in Chicago just under 2 hours later.
After collecting our bags we jumped in a cab to the hotel but sat in bumper to bumper traffic for quite a while. We finally arrived at Howard Johnson’s Inn Downtown on N Laselle St, checked-in and then walked to meet up with my friend Joey. I met Joey a few years earlier on my Asian Contiki Tour. He lives just out of Detroit but had come down with his girlfriend Kristina for the weekend.
Kristina was feeling a little worse for wear after a big night out so Joey met us at Lou Malnatis Pizzeria at 439 N Wells Street because it had the reputation of having the best deep dish pizza in Chicago.
It was only a 10mins walk from our hotel and luckily got there before Joey as there was a wait for a table. The place was very busy; I guess its reputation had something to do with that. Finally we were seated and Joey got there about 20mins later. Marnee ordered the personal size cheese deep dish pizza and I ordered a personal size pepperoni deep dish pizza; it was the perfect size and was very tasty. While we were sitting there the people on the table next to us were so lovely they handed us a voucher they had for a free desert there, they weren’t going to use it so we may as well. So we got to share a Chocolate Chip Pizza which was a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie prepared in a deep dish pizza pan, topped with vanilla bean ice cream and whipped cream; amazing!
After lunch we were full and tired so went back to the hotel for a bit of a snooze before getting ready and heading to meet Joey and Kristina but this time at a bar called Citizen. It was only a short walk from the hotel which was good and was still daylight when we arrived.
One of his mates was having a birthday here on the rooftop and had an open bar and was happy for us to join in, it was lovely of them to be so welcoming.
We ordered some finger food while we were there to share to feel a bit better about all the free drinks. After the rooftop closed we moved on to a place called O’Callahans.
There was a bar downstairs and one upstairs. We went upstairs, got some drinks and ordered some more finger food for the group of us that had moved on to there. We also had a shot of Fireball, a cinnamon tasting whiskey – very full on! Once they closed we jumped in a cab and headed for a place calledThe Hangge-Uppe.
This place was cool. It had two all-request djs and five fully staffed bars. There was old school music downstairs ranging from the 60’s to the 90’s and upstairs was current hits. I wish we had a place like this in Melbourne, its open 7 days a week! We stayed here for quite a few hours. We lost Nick at some point but he was big enough to look after himself so eventually we decided it was time to head home, we said our goodbyes and thankyous and got ourselves in a cab back to our hotel for some well needed sleep.
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