Given we hadn’t been to Chicago before and we didn’t know much about it, we decided to do a Hop On Hop Off Bus here. Thankfully there were 3 stops really close to our hotel, so we started with the first stop and decided to go around the whole loop (or so we thought). While there was blue sky, it was a pretty chilly day in Chicago and sitting on the top of the open air double decker bus made it even chillier!! We got about half way around, to Navy Pier, and decided to get off and walk around a bit to defrost! Unfortunately while we were here Wade started to get a migraine, so it was back on the bus and back to the hotel (thankfully the next stop was not far from our hotel so we didn’t have too far to go).
Wade put himself to bed, while I played on the laptop in the dark for a bit! After a while, I decided to head back out and finish the loop on the bus and I’m glad I did (not glad that Wade wasn’t with me though). The tour guide on the bus I got on was great and knew so much about the city and the buildings.
Chicago has some amazing buildings/architecture (some that are really old and some that have been designed more recently and in some cases look old!). Probably the one I found most interesting was the building just across the river from us where the Chicago Tribune are located. Attached the building are pieces of famous buildings and monuments from all around the world.
I came back to the hotel around 4.30pm and Wade was up and feeling a bit better. We had an Ice Hockey game to go to tonight so we decided to head out for a walk and early dinner to make sure he was ok to still go. We headed down to Millennium Park to check out Cloudgate (or the Bean as it is known) which was really cool! We also couldn’t pass up trying a famous Chicago deep dish pizza while we were here and we found a place not far from the park to go to. The pizza’s take about 45 minutes to cook from ordering and we decided on a half cheese/spinach and half BBQ Chicken and Bacon. The small was only six pieces and it while it taste really good, it was so big that between us we only ate four pieces (this was after an appetiser of mozzarella sticks though - we definitely covered our dairy intake for the day!!).
After dinner we headed back to the hotel to pick up our tickets and headed out to the Ice Hockey game at the United Centre. The game was a pre-season game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Montreal Canadiens, but even though it was a pre-season game there was still plenty of action (and thanks to watching Mighty Ducks movies over and over again I actually knew a bit more about the game than I thought!!). Unfortunately the Blackhawks lost (there seems to be a pattern happening for us as all the games we have gone to the home team has lost so far!), but it was still great fun. After the game we caught the bus back into the city and headed back to the hotel to bed.
Today we had organised a hire car (originally Wade had wanted to go to a theme park, but unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it ended up being closed during the week while we were here and only opened on the weekends). Given it is coming up to Halloween, before we left home I had found a Pumpkin Farm not too far out of town that we could go and visit. While it was a bit random (and we were possibly the only people there without kids), it was pretty cool to see. The farm had a market place (with pumpkins of all sizes to choose from and carving kits to purchase), as well as a whole bunch of animals that you could feed (including Giraffes!). We wandered around the farm for a bit, went through the corn maze and hay bale maze and then headed back to the car. After this we grabbed a quick lunch at a mall not far away and then got on the road again and headed out to the outlets. This was very dangerous, and while I bought a few things, I held back because I realised there is so much more shopping to do over the course of the trip!
After we finished at the outlets, we headed back into the city, and decided to drive along the lake for a bit before we dropped the car back. As we headed further out of the city along the lake we finally found somewhere we could park and get out (without it costing a fortune!). Our first stop found us at a section of the park that was actually a dog park (it was cool to see all the dogs playing but made us miss our boy though). We then drove around a bit more and stopped again at a section which had great views back towards the city.
After dropping the car back, we had a bit of a rest at the hotel before heading out for a last wander around the streets and dinner.
Here are some pics from the last couple of days (we took hundreds it was hard to narrow it down to just these ones):
Some of the many buildings & sites around Chicago
The buildings in the next two photos were the only ones that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871
If you look really close in the second picture you can see them dancing!
Bean!
I'm in here somewhere!
Mmmm....deep dish pizza!
Blackhawks v Canadiens
Views around the lake
Last walk around the city
No comments:
Post a Comment