A Grandiose Finale In The Windy City

Goooooooood morning Vietnam! Our very last day in Chicago dawning bright and clear to the wonderful sounds of children talking extremely loudly. And I don’t mean my little cousins. I mean my brother. Thanks. I had to get up anyways to take a shower before we left, but still an extra five minutes of beauty sleep can make all the difference. The cousin group left shortly before we did, but they really beat us into the city, because we had to drop off the dog at Becky’s again, pick up the backpack from O’Hare, tasked to Dad and Isaac, and then meet up on the train on the way into downtown. Everything actually went quite smoothly, but was very time consuming at the very same time and we didn’t get up to ground level until 11:30am, two and a half hours after we left. Our first and only order of business was to get to the Architectural River Tour. Dad thought we were going to miss the noon one and have to wait for another couple of hours for the next. We lucked out though. It turned out it left at 12:30pm, not right at noon, so we were right on schedule. The tour was narrated by Jake from Shoreline, not State Farm, and there were very many interesting facts that went down. There’s a large variation in the buildings on the bank of the Chicago river, ranging from art deco, to modern, to post-modern and so on. One of the largest buildings, taking up two city blocks, is the Merchandise Mart, which also happens to be the headquarters of Candor in Divergent. Then there was the post-modern Trump Tower, the second tallest building in the city, a huge thing made up entirely of glass and steel. There were two separate “cities” designed by an architect that didn’t believe in right angles. The first was a pair of towers resembling corn cobs and the second was the Rive City, right on the shoreline with it’s very own marina that never freezes. Both were complete with restaurants, gyms, office spaces, apartments and parking garages, essentially designed so you would never have to leave your immediate area to do anything. The tour was quite fun and the facts were very interesting, especially the bit about the Aqua condominium being the third tallest tower designed by a woman. The entire trip took about an hour and a half. When we finished, we started towards the Navy Pier yet again to meet up with my aunt and uncle, stopping at a little breakfast club along the way for lunch. It turned out that they had just opened up, so it wasn’t very busy but the food was excellent. I ordered potato pancakes with sour cream and apple sauce. Mum had arranged to meet Auntie Suz and Uncle Adam right outside the Bubba Gump at the very beginning of the Pier. We had to wait a bit but they eventually appeared from out of the Children’s Museum with apparently exhausted childrens who fell asleep right away. The girls didn’t even move when we pulled into the park made solely for kids, right beside Millennium Park. Isaac wanted to run around and play, so we did stop for about twenty minutes, during which Mum went to grab a couple of 4.00$ water bottles since we were all thirsty. After the girls had woken up from their nap we moved along, stopping

again at the twin fountains in Millennium Park when we walked across the bridge, since Kate had woken up enough to want to play. That ended up being an even shorter stop than the previous, spiced up a bit when I had water poured on my back. Thanks Auntie Suz. Even though we had just had lunch, the others were hungry for dinner so we decided to wander around until we found a suitable place to eat. Uncle Adam spotted a comic shop and it was mandatory that we stop and take a look around. That ate up about a half hour more, and by this time none of us really wanted to walk the kilometre and a bit to get to the cafe Dad had picked out. We ended up at Naf Naf Grill for some falafel on a pita and other such items. It was pretty good, but nobody in my immediate family really wanted any save Isaac, who is a huge pig. The milkshake place next door was our final stop in the city of Chicago before our inevitable train ride back home. I sat with Claire on the L, where she wanted me to read her the emergency instructions over and over again. I rode back to the campsite with the kids again, in the back between a hyped up Simon and Claire, where we watched the rest of Madagascar. Isaac and I brought Kate and Claire back to Smaug, where I read a couple of stories to them before bedtime. They were both excited because they didn’t have any clean pyjamas out, so they got to sleep naked, which is apparently the most comfortable way to sleep ever, according to Claire. I did some homework while I waited for them to fall asleep, and then headed off to bed myself, preparing for the drive the next day. Peace out m8s.

#chicago #camping #illinois