Chicago!

Ok! So yes, I know its been a wee while too long. My bad. At the urging of my parents- who Im pretty sure are about the only ones who read this anyway- I am going to update you now! I got home last night from an epic adventure with Rebecca, Bonnie and Brittany. Me and Rebecca flew to Chicago last Friday at 10 am ish. That was super fun seeing as I finished work at 12.15, got home at 1.15am, got to bed at about 2 and had to be up at 6.30 to pack!! I functioned reasonably well for the rest of the day considering my very limited sleep. So yeah we flew into Chicago and after much deliberation and confused-ness caught the train into the CBD. Luckily the train stopped about a block from the hostel we were staying at. Unfortunately we walked in the wrong direction so the one block became about 10 or so. With our bags. Awesome. We dumped all of our stuff then went for a wander to Millenium park which was awesome, there are huge big sculptures and stuff. There is one called cloud gate, I think its pretty famous. Its shaped kinda like a bean and its made of reflective steel or aluminium or something so it reflects the skyline in a crazy mirror kinda thing. It was amazing, you could walk under it and photo bomb other peoples photos really easily :). After that we started walking to the John Hancock tower but gave up because of rain and went inside the art gallery instead. It was crazy, there was so many pieces in there that I had studied! Picasso and Gris and Braque and Kandinsky and Hopper and Brancussi and Mondrian and that one with the American Gothic man and woman with the pitchfork. It was awesome. Except that by about half the way around it I was getting really hungry which isnt good because then I get grumpy. Soooo we caught the train to this super cool diner with waiters and waitresses yelling at each other and singing and dancing to 50s music. They got up on the tables and lipsynced at one point. The food was good in a heart attack waiting to happen kinda way. Rebecca gave her number to the waiter. I laughed. Caught the bus home and slept so so so so well!! The next day- Saturday- was really gross and rainy. We were going to do a walking tour but that failed because of the rain so we went shopping instead. Didn't really see anything of interest though, except for a whole lot of really artsy kinda shops that we wanted to buy everything from. I bought an umbrella because it was really really rainy! I didnt really think that purchase through though, its kinda not exactly compact which made carrying it aroung a wee bit annoying. I managed to stab both myself and Bex with it. The handle is also entirely metal which means if I use it in Florida Ill probably be struck by lightning and die. Oh well lol, it made me feel very Mary Poppins like while I was carrying it!! After we went shopping the rain stopped for a while so we did a walking tour of historic architecture. It was pretty fantastic, saw lots of buildings we wouldnt have looked at twice but that were actually amazing if you looked at them properly. One of the things I liked most about Chicago was the diversity of the buildings. Most cities all of the skyscrapers and other buildings look the same but in Chicago they were all totally different. There were all sorts of different influences chucked all in together. It was really interesting to look at. Um. After that we went to Pizzeria Uno for tea and got deep dish chicago pizza which was so so good! Yummmm. We were both feeling kinda ickyy by then because we had forgotten to drink anything all day so we tried to rehydrate all at once. Not a smart idea because we then went to Billy Elliot the Musical and as epically awesome as it was, I needed to pee the entire second half. Billy Elliot was amazing though. Absolutely amazing! Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. We got our seats for $25 which we thought was a good deal, they were limited view but you only missed one corner of the stage which nothing happened in anyways. Went home, went to bed. Sunday we started by going up the Sears tower. Except that now its the Willis tower. But all good, its the tallest building in the states. We stood on the little glass plate things and looked dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooown to the little people underneath us. It was pretty cool, but maybe not worth the $15 or whatever it was to get up there. The sky tower is fairly similar. Not as tall, but similar. After that we walked around the water front to Navy Pier which is the really really super touristy bit of the city. Ate Chicago style hotdogs for lunch then went to the circus! After that we caught a bus to try and go to the zoo but we epic failed because we got lost then it started to rain. Again. So we wandered back to the train station again, back to the hostel and ate our left over pizza for tea. THEN, and thats in capitals because this was EPIC, we went to the cheesecake factory for dessert. OH MY GOSH. It was so so so so good. I got raspberry truffle and Rebecca got tiramisu and we ate half of each and felt sick but it was so amazingly awesome tasting. Then we walked home and went to bed. Wow Im doing pretty well remembering what happened on each day huh? Monday we checked out of the hostel and left all of our stuff there while we went to Oak Park which is the suburb that Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright were from. It was pretty. Kinda similar to the art gallery/ Hagley kinda area of Chch. Then we got our gear and caught the train to Michigan to meet Brittany and Bonnie who had spent the last 2 days driving the distance we flew in 2 hours. Bahaha. Did all kinds of fun stuff there too but Ill leave that for another day because my fingers hurt. Bye!