Next morning we signed up for a hostel led city walking tour. This was really good, as the guide talked about the history (the whole of Chicago burnt to the ground about 100 years ago), and the architecture.
After the tour we headed down to Millenium Park and wandered along back to the hostel. The park is big and has a number of stages and sculptures. One sculpture in particular was like a giant 'bean' made of silver, that you could walk through and see your reflections in, it was very cool. The park also has a large water fountain and is the site of the 'taste chicago' festival which has just started.
After lunch and coffee we headed back to the Art Institute to quickly to see a few things we ran out of time for last night. We had to be back at the hostel by 6.30pm, as some nice Girl Guides were going to cook dinner for us, spaghetti...mmm...
Saturday morning we jumped on a bus and headed up to Lincoln Park. We strolled through the park for a bit but the main attraction was the Zoo. Its been a while since we have been to a zoo, and this is a pretty good one, and free. The highlight was seeing the beaver and otter pools from the underwater viewing windows. There were also kangaroos, lions and tigers, bears, a reptile house and an african section.
Halfway back to town we got off the bus to go to the beach. In the underpass under the road to the beach was some crazy naked guy getting arrested by the police. The beach was busy as it was a nice sunny day. Unlike at home the beach was actually concrete with a bike path along it. Its not ocean, its on Lake Michigan. You can dive off the concrete into the water which is about 3 meters deep. The beach was actually quite nice and had views of the lake and the city in the background. We walked along and found a 'sand' section where Christine was able to have a paddle.
Our next stop was the John Hancock Tower, where we took the lift to the 96th floor which is a bar/lounge. This gave us great views of the lake, city and sunset, although the weather had started to get a bit cloudy, storms expected tonight. The restaurant below was quite classy, we looked a bit out of place in our beach gear, while other people were dressed up for a night out on the town. Unlike the observatory in the Hancock building or the Sears building there is no fee to enter the 96th floor, guests are only expected to buy one drink! So we had beers and watched the sunset over Chicago and Lake Michigan.
Once we had finished our drinks it had gotten dark, we headed to Gino's Pizzeria for dinner. Chicago is famous for its deep dish pizza, and we had a few recommendations to go to Gino's. After lining up for a table where we met some Canadian girls on a shopping holiday, we were seated at a booth. Gino's is also famous for the graffiti on the walls. Guests can write or draw on the walls, so Christine drew a picture of 'roo' and a map of Australia with 'The Sheridans' written inside it. Bruchetta and a 20oz beer helped with the wait for the pizza, nearly and hour (which they told us it would be).
The pizza was different but very nice. It was about 2inches high. The base is thick and deep (like a pastry on a quiche), but the texture was a combination of pizza base and scone mix. The topping was 'upside down' cheese on the bottom and lots of sausage, salami, capsicum, olives and tomatoe - Yum! Our waitress Michelle was also very friendly and enjoyed meeting 'little mate (roo)'.
Sunday morning we checked out of the hostel and stored our bags, we have a night bus to Niagra Falls leaving at 5pm.
We took the bus down to Navy Pier which we hadn't got around to seeing yet. Typical american pier, ferris wheel, rides, fast food, wax museum and a movie theartre. We liked the fountain at the start of the pier where we could have a splash.
We then headed back to millineum park to check out the Taste Chicago festival. This was about a hundred odd local restaurants which had set up stalls in the park and had 5 or 6 menu items and 2 tasting plates available. We tried a few of the tasting plates including a boneless rib sandwich, italian doughnuts and baklava. We then returned to the hostel and had some left over pizza for lunch.
The bus to Niagra Falls was via Cleveland and Buffalo. All up it took about 15hr, the last bus from Buffalo to Niagra was only supposed to take an hour but ended up taking 2.5hrs. All of this didn't seem so bad after speaking to some guys who had taken a bus from Las Vegas to Chicago, about 50 hours! Time seemed to go quickly, especially the second half where we managed some sleep.Arriving at Niagra at about 10am we walked the 3km with our packs to the hotel, this included a breakfast stop at Tim Hortons. Suprisingly when we arrived at the hotel they gave us a room immediately.
No comments:
Post a Comment