Chicago, IL: Day 1

We headed over to Chicago to visit Matt and Brandon and give Nick some time to start settling in with Freya. It was about 2 hours, so compared to the 14 hours it took to get to South Bend, total piece of cake.

We started the day with brunch at a fancy Mediterranean place followed by some interesting ice cream. Allan was not impressed with the prices... I promised to do better with remembering to keep to budget. Ice cream is just so exciting!

Matt and Brandon headed out to meet friends for a birthday party, and Allan and I went on an architecture cruise. This was very cool! The ☀️ was shining and while it was hot, it was a great day to be on an open top boat cruise. The buildings in Chicago are all pretty unique and it was very informative and interesting to hear about the designs of buildings, as well as wider implications into the layout and architecture of Chicago.

We stopped for dinner at Giordano's. Unfortunately, their famous deep dish (allegedly) took almost an hour to cook, then ended up being cold in the middle. We knew we’re cutting it a bit tight for time, so Allan asked how long the pizza would take. The waitress said 35-40 minutes. When it got to the 50-minute mark and everybody around us has their pizzas, including those who ordered after us, we knew they’d missed our order.

Allan was not a happy chappy. When he eventually managed to get the waitress’ attention, she didn’t seem interested. Allan remained an unhappy chappy and requested to speak to the manager. The he manager was “a bit of a cunt” (Allan’s words). When the manager tried to get sarcastic with Allan, Allan got more sarcastic with the manager. The manager was never going to win. The amusing part was that we were so hungry by the time the manager appeared that we’d eaten half the pizza and had to spread out the remaining (cold parts) to make it seem like we hadn't eaten so much. Not a great experience, but a free (almost) dinner.

The Willis Tower Skydeck was pretty busy. There's a new museum-style pathway through the bottom floor to get you to the elevator. Due to the delay with our food, we had to rush the museum a bit to get up to the top for sunset… only to find that the west side has the Ledge (the big windows). The queue for the Ledge was huge, so we could only watch the sun go down from afar. However, when we got to the Ledge, the colours in the sky were beautiful. The 90-second time limit for the Ledge not so much!

We got the metro back to Matt and Brandon's before heading out again to the Green Mile, a former haunt of Al Capone. It was a one-in-one-out policy when we arrived, but we all agreed we wanted o go in, so we waited outside for a short while. The jazz music was good and it had a pretty cool, but serious-jazz, vibe. 🎶 We managed to get better seats as the night went on. Allan likes to be able to see jazz musicians since they’re often so animated compared to others and so he can see the chemistry between them.

Allan’s deal of the day: free dinner at Giordano's.Читать далее