Tourist Day 1: Sky Deck

 Wednesday, May 28th, the day I had been waiting for for months finally was here. Ethan ran his stuff to the dry cleaners (and by run I mean quite literally), bought our bus passes, and we headed to the library to print off our tour bus passes. While Ethan was gone, Kelsey was in charge of the planning.

Since Ethan was going to be going to work on June 2nd, we wanted to do as many touristy things as we could before his days were full. We bought a CityPass and a Tour Bus pass to help us accomplish that goal. We knew everything was going to be pricey so the CityPass gave us discounted tickets and allowed us to cut in all the lines as long as we used the tickets within 9 days. The Tour Bus pass gave us a tour around all the major sites of the city for 3 days. We did the actual tour once and then just used it as a taxi. The tour bus stopped at all the major attractions in our CityPass book so it was a win, win, win.

I am pleased to announce that my first bus experience was a success. I got on, scanned my card, and got off. It was as easy as everyone said, but I did it. I can do great things. 

Kelsey LOVED the bus by the way (unfortunately day 3 and 4 did not look like this)

 This was our city bus stop

That first day in the city was COLD!!! I did warm up for a bit in the afternoon, but i was glad we had sweatshirts. While we were walking around, we just kept saying that we were so glad that we were here in the summer. I'm so sorry Annie and Andy! That wind is bitter and we were here in June!!!

Our tour bus picked us up at the Hard Rock Cafe and then we were on the "tour." We had already decided that we were going to get off at the Sky Deck aka Sears/Willis tower and I am so glad that we did.  The tour guide, Rob, was awful!! He made us super nervous about the money that we had spent. All he told us was that he missed the building he was supposed to talk about, pointed out a cross dressing bar and asked people on the bus if they wanted to go, and then sat down. I kinda hope Rob got fired. We never saw him again and I am so glad. He sang to Kelsey and had a great voice so maybe he will find a better job that better suits his skill set.

The Sky Deck was amazing. Pictures do it no justice. We all got into an elevator, and they took us up to floor 103 where the view was. When I say we ALL got into the elevator, I mean we ALL! They don't mess around. They fill those things to max capacity.

This is the ceiling. If you can believe it, you actually can't see the 6 people in front of us

 It wasn't a clear day so we couln't see four states, but the view was  breath taking nonetheless

 

Northish

 more northish

 east

 south

 west

 The newest attraction to the Sky Deck is the room made out of glass. We were like super spooked of this room, but HONESTLY it wasn't that spooky.

It was cool, but you couldn't really see the bottom too well, so it wasn't too scary. Even Kelsey walked right on.

So while we were there, there was a high school there on a field trip and some of the boys were laying down on the floor getting pictures. I thought it looked like an awesome idea. It wasn't. I hate being lead astray by high school boys.

  

 After the Sky Deck Ethan wanted to show me his building which is right across the street.

 And then it was time for lunch. First stop: DEEP DISH PIZZA!! Okay, I'm not just saying this but it really did taste different and I loved it. For those who are new like myself, it goes crust, pepperoni, cheese, pepperoni, cheese, and then sauce. Its amazing and super messy.

 Naturally we are Blackhawk fans now. Didn't even know they were a team until Wednesday

 Hate this picture of me, but Kelsey looks so excited. She ate probably half of my pizza. I was not pleased.

 After lunch we walked over to Union Station to look inside. It is the main train station in and out of the city. It is HUGE and truly breath taking. I don't know this, but it looks as though the trains used to go inside it, its that big (now they go under it).

  

 

After that quick peek, we hopped our tour bus to Millennium Park to see the Bean aka Cloud Gate

I couldn't keep my camera down. Everything was so breath taking. A lot of the day was realizing that we were ACTUALLY in Chicago and not just taking about it or pinning things to see. There was no ounce of me that DIDNT look like a tourist but I slowly learned to be okay with that. I wanted my pictures gosh darn it! I love being here and am so grateful for the opportunity that we have to spend a whole summer to really get to know the city and its surroundings.

 Kelsey was out by this point. She was too full on pizza to keep her eyes open

 Solider Field: Home of the Chicago Bears

 the harbor

 super blurry, but this was an awesome tunnel AND it was the tunnel where the chase scene happened in Batman 2: Dark Knight which by the way we watched again and its fun to now watch it and be like, "been there!"

 After the Bean, we took the Tour Bus tour for real. We listened to all the stops and I'm so glad we did. It really helped us see the city and get to know it better. The tour guides we had were awesome this time. It was nice to know that Rob was an anomaly. It also warmed up a little so we could sit on the top deck of the double decker bus. By the end of the tour, the weather was already cold again and the tour guide said, "Well there's Chicago for ya. If you don't like the weather you should stay in the same place for 20 minutes. It will change." I thought she was kidding, but we've only been here a few days and thats totally true!

The Aqua building

 Lake Michigan

 Trump building and its surrounding buildings

 the Wrigley building

 Chicago Tribune AKA Gotham City Tower my favorite building

 

 

 The "Corn Cob" apartments and Target downtown

 And finally the family selfie session

There are four things I love about Chicago so far. 1) There are  sculptures everywhere! I'm not a huge art buff, but it really adds to the city. The buildings are also the art. You can tell that the architects really try to make their buildings look "Chicago." They really have to stand out and be different. Even in the neighborhoods like where we live buildings just are different.
2) I didn't know this, but there are so many old buildings with really old architecture that are just breath taking. I didn't realize that Chicago was such an old looking city. It's beautiful.
3) The third water is such a major part of the city.  You see the river all the time and can always see Lake Michigan. It is stunning and helps me remember that even though this is totally new, they still have a lake and a river. I can mentally do that. 
and 4) There are parks everywhere. Its not just pavement and buildings. There are so many parks which the Wing obviously loved.

          It was a cold morning, beautiful afternoon and then this started to happen. A crazy fog cloud started to blow in from the lake and it was freezing. We knew then that it was time to get on the bus

Day one was a huge success. The bus ride back was less ideal because it was super crowded. One guys sitting next to me the whole time was silent, until 3 minutes before his stop and in those 3 minutes he decided that he needed to inform me about why vaccination are bad. Here's why " They put pieces of aborted babies in your child's vaccinations and it will make her not be able to talk someday. It happened in Iowa just in January. They also put mercury in the shots so she will die of that too." Thanks man on the bus for letting me know why my child will die of mercury poisoning as a mute.  Oh the joys of public transit that I have been missing out on.
Oh Chicago. You're crazy! 

Out of towners

The drive into Illinois was crowded and hot. Little did I know that it was only going to get worse. The drive from Wales to Chicago was only 2 hours, but it still was very exciting to see Chicago signs.

Like all of the Midwest, Illinois is very beautiful and very green. Even in the city

We found our apartment and luckily our land lady was there to greet us. Again. The NICEST person I have ever met in my entire life. She is so genuine and so excited about Chicago. She just wants to make sure that we love it as much as she does and that we adapt quickly. She is very kind and super helpful always sending us emails or just dropping by when she thinks of new things Kelsey and I could do. It is so nice to have our own personal Native. I really feel like she is our friend and I am grateful to her. She also has a dog named Dolce, that Kelsey obviously loves.
Once we got the tour and unloaded all of our stuff (as quickly as possible because the trash bags seemed especially white trash in our neighborhood!!!) , Ethan and I were trying to plan what we wanted the day to look like and looked over to find this...

Kelsey just made her self right at home. She was so happy to be out of the car and so happy to be in Chicago that she made our decision easy. We weren't going to tour today, we were only going to get situated and explore our neighborhood.

We were sick of eating out so we decided that we were going to stock our pantry. We hopped in the car and headed to the nearest Walmart. Our only goal was to avoid the city because we were still so new at driving. We typed in Walmart on Ethan's GPS and took off. We were so new that we just blindly followed the GPS. Ethan's doing great and then all of a sudden cars are whizzing by us. Streets that are supposed to be 2 lanes are three where cars fit, taxis are honking at us, buses are cutting us off, and there are people everywhere! We finally started paying attention to the city and noticed that it was getting bigger and bigger. Little did we know, but we were headed right for the heart of the city underneath the train tracks! This is when the laughter kicked in which didn't help anything.

The mission got aborted but I did get some great pics. It still weird to me that stores look like this. I mean have you ever been to a Target or grocery store with a parking garage. AND some of the parking garages only let you park there if you pay!! Crazy right?

Well, I at least got to glimpse the city but we turned around so fast that it didn't last very long. We couldn't have looked more like out of towners. We were so out of our league. We got home and WALKED to the nearest restaurant that we could find which luckily was Subway.

After dinner, we started walking around our neighborhood trying to get a feel for the area. We found a school with a playground a block away and that is where our walking tour ended for the night.
I love the schools here. I have never really seen big city schools and so they all just blow my mind. Some are older than others, but all of them have at least two levels. Most have more.

The school had turf instead of grass and the students had painted old tree stumps for some of their play equipment.

 

This picture was taken because we were so blown away that she was actually eating. We think the no eating phase is past for now. In Wales she had two pieces of salmon and had a whole sandwich in the car. This is a huge deal for us.

And Fran is a women after my own heart. She had a gift basket waiting for us when we arrived and there was popcorn and caramel corn waiting inside. It was a great night.