Chicago - Day One

April 14th, Thursday:

Landed in Chicago, excited out of my mind for this trip. I ended up bumping into Bimpsy as I was on my way to baggage claim, so it worked out perfectly. We grabbed my giant monster of a duffle bag and made our way to the trains. The El - very cool! I loved it! I was very impressed with how well Bimps knew the train system in the few months she's been in Chicago, and at the risk of sounding a tad OCD, I was very happy with how clean the trains were. I seriously half expected to have trash sticking to my shoes and some kid's melted Junior Mints all over my butt. At one point, my know-it-all tendency took me over and I suddenly became convinced that we needed to get on a certain train (I swear Bimps said that was the train we needed!) so I was all set to go and managed to lunge off the train with my bags at the last minute as Sam shouted that it was the wrong one. The platform was full of people, and we both laughed until tears were streaming down our faces. It probably wasn't that funny, but hell, we thought it was!

We made our way to her apartment - a super cute studio with a full kitchen/dining room, huge main room, great deck, tons of closet space, a large "dressing room", and a cute bathroom. The apartment is in a renovated hotel, so it has a lot of charm and, really, I was very impressed. She said she has never seen another living soul in her hallway so I was determined that we'd see one, but no, she was right. Not one person the whole time I was there. The apartment itself was reminiscent of some of the apartments I'd had when I was single and it made me a little wistful. We dropped off my stuff and headed out of the building, passing a man walking his dog that Bimps has run into a few times. He asked if we were sisters and said, "See? You people all look alike," which I thought was hilarious, considering that the man was Asian-American. Bimps didn't get his joke at first, but hey, that's what big sisters are for. To explain stuff.

We made our way to Lake Michigan, which was GORGEOUS. It is so amazing to look across it and think, "That's just a lake," because it is completely endless and as if you are looking into the ocean. We started walking on the broken-up wall along the lake and I totally took a nosedive because I was wearing Bimpsy's tennis shoes which were at least an inch longer than mine (mine hurt my feet), so the clown shoes totally made me go down. The good news is that we were then able to distinguish whose cheap drugstore camera was whose since I suddenly had big gashes in mine. I made a fool of myself, but we were able to squeeze in another great laugh. We made our way down the lake and chatted with two fisherman, one of whom took our picture for us. Seems like the people in Chicago are really chatty; lots of people struck up conversation with us while I was there. We walked over two miles and made our way downtown for a Chicago dog. It was awesome, of course, even though the relish was a very freaky green color, like someone went WAY overboard with the food coloring. I usually HATE anything even remotely pickle-ish, but I had to try it so it could be authentic. I even had onions, and what do you know - I've lived to tell the tale. We decided to participate in the ultimate tourist trap and went on a carriage ride. It was $35 to basically go around five blocks that we could have walked ourselves in a tenth of the time, and it wasn't like the driver gave us a scenic or architectural rundown on the places we passed, but it was still great. It felt good to be cheesy and do something that we'd never have otherwise spent money on. Okay, me, anyway. Bimps has already been on one ride since she moved there.

After that, we went to the 96th of the John Hancock building for a drink and a look out the women's bathroom window, since that's really the best view! We both happened to be wearing green shirts, and we sat in a section of the bar where there were at least two other people with green shirts on, so it was a little dippy, but not as dippy as $20 for two drinks! We wisely got out of there and made our way to Ghirardelli for an ice cream, which is a much better way to spend money if you ask me! It was great, but neither of us could finish so we donated the rest to the subway trash cans on our way home. We got back to Bimpsy's apartment and started watching "Sideways" but I kept falling asleep, so we decided to pick it up the next day...