Downtown Chicago

Yesterday we decided to check out what Chicago had to offer so we headed for Downtown. Not being the only former i-housers in the area we called up Julie, Soyoung, Sophie and Claire to see if they wanted to meet up for a picnic in Chicago's Millennium Park, we arranged a time of 11am. This gave us about an hour to wonder around so we walked towards Grant park where we captured a fantastic view of the Chicago skyline.

Grant Park however is far overshadowed by the new $500 million Millennium Park so we headed over there to have a look at Cloud Gate (more commonly known as 'The Bean'). This was a really impressive sculpture and made for some fun poses. This is were we met up with Soyoung and Julie, however the Irish girls never made it on time because of some temporarily lost passport kerfuffle'!! The 6 of us found a 7/11 and bought some food to take to eat in the park before playing some frisbee and what can only be described as the most ridiculously hard round of mini golf ever! Half way round the mini golf, we did manage to meet Sophie and Claire for about 5 minutes before they had to get on a train for Lake Michigan.

After this we decided to head for some food, the guys via a camera shop to buy a tripod and the girls via a clothes shop. The restaurant we found was a Mexican place in Sears Tower which was well priced and server delicious Fajitas. After this we each payed $15 and headed up Americas tallest building. The views from the top were spectacular an allowed us to compare Chicago to New York, that is Chicago's Skyscrapers are more densely packed and the city is quite low rise 2 miles outside the CBD, the views are stunning none the less.

Getting tired, we decided to do only one more thing for the evening, that was walk to Grant park and get a look at the impressive lit up fountain and see the night skyline. This allowed us to take some artistic photos. Then we headed back to Motel near O'Hare and get some well earned sleep. Tuesday awaits . . .