Sweet home...

Car trip to Chicago with three others was a success. In numbers:

Fights amongst all: zero
Inane arguments with boyfriend only: three (must work on that)
Tense moments for no reason in particular: a few, but rather than experiencing them directly, I was told about them
Laughs: uncountable

Day One: In car - k's. Arrived in Chicago, via a loop round O'Hare 'just for fun', at 11:30pm. Dined on pizza before bed. Hostel was noisy and bed very uncomfortable - you know when you lie down and put a sheet over yourself and no one would know there's a person in the bed? That kind of uncomfortable.

Day Two: Being A Tourist, Part I. Coffee. Breakfast. Bus ride. Sears Tower. Walking. Lunch. Self-guided sculpture tour. More walking. Navy Pier. Ferris Wheel. Dinner. Swings. Stained glass museum. Walking. Nasty bus lady. Hostel. 'Blues' bar. Bed. Noise. Too tired to notice, so had to be told about that, too.



This sculpture is called the flamingo and is "just an example of the laughs we have around here"

Day Three: Being A Shopper. Ate crepes down the street from the hostel: this is probably how all successful people start their days. Walked to Bucktown. Much as I hate shopping, I love to browse around a place like this, full of odd shops and one-off bars and cafes; so much so that I wasn't disappointed to be the only one to come home with no bag. Eventually we got back to the hostel to change into our Cure Fan costumes (ummm, jeans and a black t-shirt for me!) and took the train to some arena in oblivionland.

And it was there that I finally saw my all-time favourite band. More on that later.

Day Four: Being A Tourist, Part II. Coffee. Walk to Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park Zoo. Old Town. Cabrini-Green. Coffee. Prada Shop. Failed rendezvous with companions. Magnificent mile. Pay phone fiasco. Lunch outside John Hancock centre. Successful call from pay phone, leading to successful rendezvous with companions. Art Institute. Millennium Park. Giant Jelly Bean thingie. Pizzeria Due. Best pizza of my life. Noisy Texans. Bus ride. Pint. Noisy hostel-goers. Poor sleep.

How cute is this little gaffer? His nose twitched while he dreamt.

Day Five: In car. Half quiet and dull, half joke-laden and hilarious. In bed of comfortable silence by 1:45am.

Fun time! This was a whirlwind of a trip, but I could wander around there for months. There's such a diversity of things to see.

One Great City! is often, wrongly, referred to as the Chicago of the North. This is mainly because there is a smattering of buildings downtown which resemble those in Chicago. And maybe because of the shitty winters. I don't really know why, actually. I think we hang on to it because, as I allude to from time to time, One Great City! has low self-esteem, so to compare itself to Chicago is like highlighting the really good bits - there are some, but it's not the same. A few years ago, I went to a lecture by a local historian who wanted to dispel the myths about One Great City! and this moniker was one he thought we should shake off, mainly because it's inaccurate. Chicago is huge, millions of people live there - it has even burnt to the ground and been built back up. It's just misleading to compare the two; I'd say it extracts more confidence than it injects.

Instead, we called Chicago the One Great City! of the South.

I sign off with a tune by a great artist who runs a club on the Near South Side. If I ever get to go back, I will go there.