Day 3 - Chicagoing

The day started well with breakfast in bed, a slice of watermelon and a yoghurt which we bought last nice - having a kitchen in the hotel room is handy!



We then hit the Mag Mile and headed to the Hersheys shop to claim our free Hersheys bar which came with the bus tour (as did a tshirt and popcorn). Next was what K had been looking forward to: the Lego Shop. We bought a lego John Hancock tower and K got a keyring, there was lots of cool lego and, as you can see above, K got a bit fresh with a lego man. She would have liked to spend the whole day in there but I put my foot down and we left. We hopped on the El up to Belmont which is in Lakeview and began the longest walking tour in the world!



Our first stop was a Baskin Robbins where we each got a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Malt, perhaps the best drink ever invented. We then walked up N Clark St to check out the local shops, the first one we went into was Chicago Comics where K bought 3 Chris Ware books, she was very excited as she got books for $15 that cost from £40 back home - sweet. We left the shop and the girl that worked there had to run after us cos i'd left my bag behind (in shops in america you often have to check in your bags). We then walked up to Wrigleyville, where the Cubs Stadium is, houses next to it had stadium seating on the roofs so people could watch the games sneakily! We went to Taco Bell for lunch and the girl that worked there was coming on to K, she loved it, but she loved the Tacos more!



We then walked to Boystown the gay area of Chicago and went in to various nice gift shops including one called GayMart! It actually sold a lot of nice stuff and I got a nice Chicago t shirt. We trundled on and passed a pizza place called Pie Hole where drag queens do the home deliveries. Our next break was at Caribou Coffee (Chicago's version of Starbucks) and both got blended beverages, we got a window seat so sat and watched all of Chicago out walking their dogs. We went to a book shop called Unabridged Books and K spent about 5 hours in the comic section! I was able to go round the whole shop in the time that she looked at about 5 shelfs, she bought 3 books in the end. It was an amazing shop and the basement was a travel section that seemed to sell books on every possible destination.



We were back in Lakeview proper by this time, but heading towards Lincoln Park (the area). We got a case for K's netbook which I think was meant to be for storing nappies but apparently someone with the same netbook had already bought it today for the same reason.



Our next break was at Borders cos K had wanted to get the Orange Cream Soda that I had yesterday, there was a guy sitting next to us drawing weird pictures with crayons, k had crayon envy!



Next we went to Lincoln Park (the park) and checked out the zoo, which is FREE, bargain! We saw lions and tigers but no bears, there were also penguins, gorillas and tigers amongst other things. We then headed back in to the area Lincoln Park and did some more browsing. We went to Argo Tea and I had a bubble tea and K had some weird super sweet strawberry tea thing. Somehow it was night time so we decided to go for dinner, we went to a place called Pasta Palazzo, it was fantastic and cheap - double score! We both had linguine with creamy pesto, I had chicken in it and K had it as was. The service was great and the portions were HUGE, we ate for ages and still had about half left to take away, the waitress identified which box was K's and which was mine by writing stripes on K's and plaid on mine (obviously this reflects what we are wearing today).



After that we hopped in a taxi back to the hotel as our feet feel like they are going to fall off. I am now considering eating my leftovers and then I think we are going to go out on 'the razz', or we will fall asleep!