Chicago: the windy, foggy, rainy, then sunny city

Day 11, Wednesday
Chicago, Illinois
Started foggy, broke through with sun later
This post by: Craig

Some of the drawbacks of being a little disorganised before our trip meant not syncing time with some good folks who live near our stops. We were lucky to catch Cam in LA (after giving him about 3 hours notice that we were near the place he’s lived for 8 years), but we missed setting up a Vancouver/Seattle crossover trip to see Dave and Jen. And then we found that we missed Brandon in Monterey by ONE NEIGHBOURHOOD BLOCK. So hey, to all those peeps we should have seen, we apologise!

Down in the hotel lobby of the Hilton (bitches), Crystal snapped some pics of flower arrangements while I tried to look in on the BOTOX convention that was in town. (“Come on, give us a smile! Anyone? You ARE smiling? Ooooh…)

We hit up Millenium Park, something we were sad to have missed last holiday. It had a wonderful fountain thing with a TV thing in it…

behind you! BEHIND YOU!!!

… a big shiny thing…

Spotto!

"...you want me to get closer to it?" DONK!

Underneath the big shiny thing.

… and even a whole orchestra, rehearsing for something or other.


And then there were bicycles. We had the option to hire Segways, but decided that we didn’t want to look like nobs (despite the cool association with Arrested Development).

How segway riding looks on TV...

...and how segway riding looks in real life.

So we rode along the lakeside, having a swoit time of it! The fog was hanging low, but it was still nice. Hoorah!

See? On bikes, we don't look like nobs...

...at all.

We stopped to check out Navy Pier, which turned out to suck a bit. For some reason, even though it had the same touristy shops and people as San Francisco’s Pier 39, it was just devoid of any soul. The bit we liked was the $6 Ferris Wheel, even though a complete fog-out rendered most of the view unviewable. Funny!

Chicago is famous for a particular heart-stopper called the ‘stuffed pizza’. Now, this is no namby-pamby stuffed crust Pizza Hut pizza or anything, this is full on PIE that takes 35 minutes to make from ordering! So we got one at Giordano’s, when we finished cycling. And we weren’t really THAT surprised that it was mainly a bread bowl of molten cheese. Yegads! (We didn’t finish it, oh no).

The menu stated that this pizza "serves 1-2 people"

Death by cheese

Good grief, though, I think we’re reaching critical mass as far as cheese goes. I passed out back at the hotel for 2 hours, just to deal with it. Ayeee!

Having said that, of course, we had more cheese at the Executive Lounge upstairs again. Cheese is deadly, unless it’s FREE. So we ate cheese and sussed out the comedy festival venues, then found one and went!


And BAM! Some random comedy club (Zanies, in Old Town) later, and Martin Short comes out on stage! FULLY! It was one of the best comedy nights we’d been to – act after act of top shelf comedians making us LAFF! No pictures of the event (they weren't permitted because the night was being filmed for a TBS TV special later in the year), but here’s us in the club after it had finished. Please note the paintings on the walls, the type of shockers we imagine could only exist because the club owner’s daughter ‘is trying so hard to be an artist’, although Crystal quite liked the portrait of Richard Lewis.


We cabbed it home, a bit too full of beer, and packed our bags while watching Dog the Bounty Hunter once again fail to catch anyone. But still, so funny to watch. Dog: “Is that a girl? Is that a girl?” Cop: “No, that’s a female officer.” Poor Dog, his eyesight is going, along with his ‘shirt off Grandpa’ looks.