The Windy City; An Introduction

Well, we decided to brave the streets of Chicago in the region of downtown this day. Our first step in completing such a task is to drop Kizzy off at her new home with Becky the dog sitter. She was very happy to be left at the house, unlike in St. Louis when we brought her to the doggy daycare, so she should survive it. The drive into the city took a really freaking long time, as it did yesterday. Why can't they do construction on the I-90 not in July thanks. We parked the truck in a parkade on the outskirts of Chicago and took the Blue Line 'L' Train the rest of the way in. Tidbit, the 'L' is the same train they hop on and off of in Divergent. I stood

most of the ride, because every time a row of two seats opened up, some business man or another sat in one chair and put their briefcase in the other. Quite the charmers. The time we spent on the train was pretty uneventful but it was fun to look out the windows when the train went up and Dad kept imitating the annoying noise that came across the intercom every time the train stopped at a station. We got off at Monroe, the station in the middle of "The Loop", the section of the railway that's downtown, where all the different lines come together. We decided the best way to find our way around was to use our Express passes we'd bought for the hop on hop off bus tour of downtown Chicago. The woman doing the tour narration was quite funny. She used "ladies and gentlemen" quite a lot and she added her own little facts into the script. We saw Millennium Park, which had some cool statues and such, Grant Park, yet another thing named after our lovely 18th president, Buckingham Fountain, the second largest fountain in the world people, the art museum, the Chicago stadium and Lake Michigan. Chicago and St. Louis seem to have some conflicting facts. For instance, both claim to be the original home of the ice cream cone. Interesting. Chicago also has a rivalry with NYC. Whatever one

does, the other has to do better. New York gave Chicago their nickname, the Windy City, because of the long winded politicians during the competition for the World's Fair. Chicago was supposed to host it, but it burnt down, so New York tried to steal it even though Chicago was still insisting they would be fine. NY didn't win that disagreement. Our first hop off was at the Navy Peer, home to the second largest Ferris wheel in the world, after the London Eye. The city is going to remodel the whole area, however, and potentially take the gold medal of Ferris wheels when they build a replacement for the one they have now. We walked around the pier for a bit, right to the end, where we stayed for a while and ate our lunch. On the way back, Dad and I decided we would ride the Ferris wheel, but the line was too long and we were on a deadline thanks to the buses, so we just made a plan to come back tomorrow. As it turned out, the bus we got on was on it’s last round, so we couldn’t take it all the way back to our station. We got off on the last stop for some snacks, and got two malts and two Chicago style hot dogs to share. Everyone took their spicy peppers off their half of hotdog, except me, because my family is wimpy when it comes to heat. Lame. Since the buses stopped running, we had to walk all the way back to the

Blue Line. There were a couple street performers we stopped to watch on the way there. The first one was a group of three guys who did some breakdancing, and the leader flipped over five and half people who were touching their toes and the two other guys whilst they were doing fancy balancing manoeuvres. The stuff they were doing was kind of gymnastics related, so it was informative to my brain as well and really cool. The second act we saw after we got drinks at a coffe shop called Peets, was a magician and we were his main helpers. I had a foam bunny wedding in my hand, and along with the wedding came children. Lots. Jeremy, the magician from England, put two bunnies in my hand and when I opened it again there were approximately ten. Then he did some tricks with balls and cups, where two limes and a potato ended up under the cups when he dropped the balls in his bag. For his final trick, he took a twenty from Dad, had Isaac draw a moustache and eyebrows on the president’s face, rolled up the bill and had it appear in the centre of a lemon. We then continued on our way, trying to find the train station that would take us back to our truck. We didn’t really know where we were going, but when we stopped on a street corner and Dad pulled out a map, a friendly couple stopped by and pointed us in the right direction. We managed to get where we needed to go from their instructions and we got on the train back to Cumberland. None of us were really that hungry when we got home, so I had a snack with some lemonade and decided to call it a night. Peace out m8s.

#chicago #illinois #camping