My vacation in the US Part IV: Chicago

I spent the last 2 days of my vacation in Chicago. One great thing about Chicago became apparent immediately when I went to buy my subway ticket from the airport to the hotel. For just 4 dollars a day, you can buy a visitor’s pass, where you have unlimited access to the buses and subways. Sweeeet!

It was about 6 pm when I met up HeeRa and Curtis again at the hotel. During the first evening, we walked around Grant Park, which was close to our hotel, and visited the Buckingham Fountain there (some of you may know it as the fountain in the opening credits of Married with Children).

We walked to Navy Pier afterward, where we walked around and had dinner there. We also went to Rush Street afterward, just to have a look and a quick drink. I’ve never heard of Rush Street before (but then again, I knew next to nothing about Chicago), but apparently it’s really famous, and is the place to be in nightlife Chicago.

The next morning, Curtis and I took a walk in Grant Park, for a large part alongside Lake Michigan. The lake is really beautiful, not at all what I expected. If you didn't know better, you’d have thought it was the sea, and the water is definitely much cleaner than at the North Sea. There are also lots of museums close to the park, which look really interesting.

We went to the John Hancock building to the 94th floor, where tourists can look out over Chicago. We then had pizza at Gino’s East, which is apparently a legendary place in Chicago, where you have to wait 2 hours in line when it’s busy. The pizza was pretty good, but I didn’t think it was that special. And they made us wait for 10 minutes outside when the restaurant was half empty. *sigh* Why do they do that? It doesn’t make sense, and just pisses customers off. At night we went to see Wicked, which was the first time I’ve seen a play. I really enjoyed it, and it was definitely worth every penny we paid for.

We had dinner at Chinatown afterward, since I had to try American Chinese food before I left. We had Crab Rangoon (deep-fried dumplings filled with cream cheese and imitation crab), General Tso’s chicken (tastes a bit like Kou Lo Kai in my opinion), and beef with broccoli (which we also have in the Netherlands actually). I didn't care much for the Crab Rangoon; the cream cheese - dumpling combination was a bit weird, but it seems to be an American favourite. I liked the other two dishes though.

On the last day, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. We saw an IMAX movie of mummification, and also looked at the U-505 submarine exhibits. We then walked around the museum for a while. The museum was enormous though, I think we just saw a small part of the museum.

After that, it was time to go back. *sniff* On the one hand, I definitely wished I could stay longer, but on the other hand, I was getting pretty tired of traveling around, and I was looking forward to going back and just relax at home.


High Point: Wicked
Low Point: Leaving…

P.S. Transferring at Heathrow sucks. It took almost two hours from gate to gate due to all the safety measures and long lines. A lot of people were freaked out about maybe missing their next flight. At least the terminal was nice.