Fall break adventures: Chicago (October 1-3)

We had fall break in the first week of October and I visited Chicago and Boston with a couple of my exchange friends. UVA Law School only gives its students three weekdays as fall break. Combined with the weekend, that's a total of five days. Five days? Ridiculous. I naturally assumed that we'd get a fortnight off, just like back home, but I guess they do things differently here. We made the most of our time off though: we extended our break by skipping some classes and it was totally worth it. I spent three days in Chicago with my friend Amy, who is also my flatmate and an exchange student from the UK. Then we flew to Boston to meet up with our friend Tom, an Australian exchange student.

So, Chicago. WOW. I loved it, SO MUCH. Let's start from day one.

Chicago: Day One

The beginning of our trip was pretty auspicious. Our flight to Philadelphia (from which we were due to take a connecting flight to Chicago) was due to leave from Charlottesville at 7:00am on Friday morning, and neither Amy and I got any sleep the previous night: Amy had gone out to Bar Review and didn't sleep when she got back home, and I had hung out with a couple of mates until about 3:00am Friday and made the conscious decision not to sleep because I hadn't packed yet and a 2-hour sleep wouldn't have done anyone any good. So yeah, we were both in an interesting place, mind-wise. But I think it was actually a good thing overall, because I slept like nobody's business on the planes, which made the flights quite pleasant. I might try that out every time I go flying from now on.


We got to Chicago and made our way from the airport to our hostel on the El train. The teeming metropolis of Chicago, unlike sleepy little Charlottesville, has an excellent public transportation system in the form of trains that run both underground and on tracks that are elevated above ground level (hence the name "El train" - they're "elevated"). We got 3-day passes for the trains and made good use of them, man. We managed to find our hostel (Chicago Getaway Hostel) okay too. I really enjoyed staying there, I'd recommend it - it was a lot cleaner and nicer than I thought it would be, which was a relief. They also had guitars for their guests to borrow and play, they totally win.

 

Our hostel. Awesome.

After checking into our room and grabbing some lunch at this cute sandwich place down the road that was also a hipster joint, we went out to explore the city. It was a gorgeous autumn day. We got off the train at the Loop in the centre of town, and wandered into the Theatre District of Chicago. Then we caught sight of the Chicago Theatre and a sign saying, "RICKY GERVAIS LIVE". What? We couldn't believe it! We learnt from the posters on the theatre windows that it was his last performance that very night. So we rushed inside to the box office and got in the queue behind these two European guys who were buying some tickets. When they were done we asked the box office man for two tickets to Ricky Gervais. He replied, "Oh, I'm sorry, I just sold the last two tickets to those guys that are walking out the door right now." WHAT? He saw the crushed look on our faces, and he told us to come back and check in a few hours to see if any more tickets were released for the show. We walked out empty-handed, but for some reason I had this strange feeling of belligerent optimism that we were going to get tickets to Ricky Gervais, even if the odds didn't look too good.

Anyway, we went to visit Millennium Park, which borders Lake Michigan. It was really beautiful. We saw the famous "Silver Bean" artwork hanging out at the park. It's real name is "Cloud Gate" but nobody calls it that. It was pretty funky, eh. Apparently it's a big Chicago icon although it's only been in the city for a few years.

Silver Bean.

The other attractions at the park were awesome too. The outdoor Harris Theatre and Pritzker Music Pavilion were neat. We weren't allowed on the grass though, so we had to admire the Theatre from afar.

The Theatre and the Pavilion.

The Crown Fountain was my personal favourite. It's basically a very shallow pool (so shallow that people can walk in it for a little bit without getting their shoes soaking wet) with two huge glass towers at each end. The towers show different pictures, like huge faces of people and waterfalls. There's a pipe in each tower through which water pours out and makes it look like the people are squirting water from their mouths. It was strange and cool, but mostly cool.

Me at the Crown Fountain.

One of the huge faces on the Crown Fountain glass tower.

We then went to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is probably one of the most famous museums in Chicago. It houses all sorts of artwork from all these different time periods, and it was HUGE. We spent two hours there and still didn't get around to see everything.

The Art Institute of Chicago.

Awesome staircases inside the Art Institute.

The Modern Wing had some pretty interesting pieces. These are the pieces I liked the most.

 

 

My favourite section was probably the Impressionism paintings, though. I wish I knew more about art, but I really enjoyed it anyway, particularly Monet. Gorgeous, much? Much. The Van Gogh paintings were pretty awesome too.

 

 

Afterwards we went back to the Chicago Theatre to check whether any more Ricky Gervais tickets had been released. To our surprise and jubilation, there had been! Apparently they decided to stick some chairs in the disabled people's section at the back of the theatre and sell them for $50.00 each. We didn't care, we bought two seats straightaway. I was like, omgosh! Ricky Gervais, live in Chicago, with a new show, and I was going to see it! It was unbelievable.

Success! Also, isn't the theatre beautiful?

Before the show, we wandered around town and explored it a bit. We wanted to find somewhere to grab a bite, but we didn't come across any decent restaurants. (Later on we found out that all the good eateries are north of the River, whereas the Theatre District is below it. Why would they plan the city like that? It makes no sense, people want good food to be available all over a city, don't they? Don't they? If I ever get to design the plans for a city I'm going to make sure that excellent food places are spread out evenly all over the place. Come on, Chicago.) Though I had a great time admiring all the beautiful Chicago buildings. I think Chicago's architecture is some of the coolest I've seen. Put a bunch of amazing buildings together to make a city, I'm gonna love that city. It was awesome just walking through the streets. I took way too many photos of random buildings. Here are some of them, both from the early afternoon at the park and from our evening stroll/hunt for food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ended up having burgers for dinner. I've had way too many burgers in this country already, probably enough to fill up my burger quota for the next year and a half. I can't remember what the place was called, something about jacks? It was okay.

So, Ricky Gervais was pretty much awesome. We were seated pretty far from the stage but we had a direct view of it, and we were close enough to make out his facial expressions. They said they were filming the performance to broadcast it on HBO in December, and told us to be extra responsive and to applaud him loudly. The opening act was average, an American comedian who was not very funny (I don't even remember his name). But Ricky Gervais was hilarious! He made jokes about fat people, Christianity and gay animals, amongst other things, and while some of them were so-so, most of them were gold. I just love his accent and his cheeky little face. Most of what he says is pretty offensive to some demographic of society, but I guess you can't take him seriously, he's a comedian and he makes a living out of making fun of different people and different beliefs. It was a great show, if I happened to find myself in the same city as him again in the future I'd definitely go watch him again. Check out the show on TV in December (or maybe it's on YouTube already), it was called "Out of England 2".

Sneaky picturetaking against the rules. Badass.

That about wraps up our first day in Chicago. It was a good day. A good, good day.

Chicago: Day Two

The weather on our second day in Chicago was not so good. It was windy, rainy and cold. But we braved the storm to get amongst more of the city's sights, sounds and flavours.

Our first stop was the infamous Giordano's, where we indulged in stuffed deep dish pizza, a Chicago gem. It's exactly what the name suggests: a pizza with a deep crust full to the brim with delicious fillings and toppings. We ordered the classic cheese pizza with special sauce, and it was glorious. Except it was way too huge and Amy and I couldn't finish it between us. But man was it good! I was pretty much consuming mouthfuls of melted cheese but it didn't feel greasy or artery-clogging at all. We were really lucky that we got there relatively early (around 11:00am), because the pizza took about half an hour to cook, and by about noon the restaurant was full of heaps of people waiting to get seats.

AMAZING.

Noobs.

As a side note, I found out later that Giordano's pizza isn't technically the "original" deep dish pizza of Chicago. But oh well, apparently it tastes the same as the original stuff and Giordano's is pretty well-known and well-loved! If I ever have a chance to return to Chicago though, I'll try to check out somewhere that does the original deep dish pizza, like Gino's East.

After pizzunch (pizza brunch) we made our way to the John Hancock Centre, the most famous observatory in Chicago where you can get the best views of the city, its surrounding suburbs and Lake Michigan. It's not the tallest building in Chicago, but we were still freakishly high up, given that the observatory was on the 95th floor.

 

It doesn't look that pretty on the outside, but it makes up for it as a gateway to amazing views of Chicago. We did a multimedia tour around the observatory which was actually pretty informative and entertaining: you walk around the observatory wearing a headset that's connected to a touchscreen machine, and when you get to a window with a number on it you punch the number into the machine, and information about the view that you have from the window comes flooding through the headset. The tour was given by David Schwimmer, a proud Chicagoan. The views that we got from up above were awesome, despite the drizzly weather and cloudy skies.

 

 

Afterwards we went on a hunt for some coats and jackets, because the weather was getting progressively worse. Despite the vast number of shops, we couldn't really find anything decent. I guess the experience wasn't fruitless, because we at least got to explore the Magnificent Mile: it's Chicago's shopping district, with all these fancy stores and cool buildings.

As the day went on, the weather miraculously cleared up, and feeling adventurous, I suggested that we go check out Navy Pier. It used to be a cargo facility for lake freighters, but now it's a tourist attraction, sort of like an amusement park. It's got all this random stuff on it, like the Amazing Chicago's Funhouse Maze (a mirror maze house), the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows (free entry, perhaps for a reason), the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and the famous Navy Pier Ferris wheel (modelled after the very first Ferris wheel). It was weird though, the Ferris wheel wasn't going and lots of the attractions seemed closed. So we just walked to the end of the pier, only checking the places out from the outside. It was still quite pretty, and we got a neat view of the city's skyline from the pier's endpoint.

 

It was windy out there on the pier.

A highlight of Navy Pier was the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company Restaurant. Dude, it was mint. I had thought that the restaurant was an existing restaurant chain that the movie "Forrest Gump" had cleverly incorporated into its storyline to make it look like Forrest Gump was the founder, but it turns out that the movie inspired the restaurant chain into being. The place did pay homage to the film in a lot of ways, like the way their drinks menu looked like a ping pong paddle. After taking our order, the waiter came back and asked us trivia questions about the movie, which we totally nailed. I thought he was going to give us prizes, but he just gave us verbal praise and left. What? But it was fine, I was so stoked to be in shrimp heaven. We got this dish to share that had shrimp cooked in all these different ways (fried, tempura, normal shrimp) and it was unbelievably good. I definitely want to go back to there!

Tasty.

In the evening we went to watch "Billy Elliot: The Musical" at the Oriental Theatre. Our seats were pretty far back, but it was still a spectacular show. It was an all-American cast and according to Amy their British accents weren't so good, but I couldn't really tell. The boy who played Billy Elliot was great! I mean, everyone was pretty brilliant, but the fact that he was this little 11-year-old boy who could dance (ballet and tap), sing and act so well just blew my mind. The songs were all really good too (go Elton John). I laughed, I cried, I sat there mesmerised. So overall, a pretty good time.

The Oriental Theatre.

That was our second day in Chicago.

Chicago: Day Three

Our last day in Chicago was awesome too. Luckily the weather was much better than the previous day. Yay.

For some reason I woke up pretty early in the morning, so I decided to go downstairs to have the free breakfast at the hostel dining room. It was actually a pretty decent selection. As I grabbed a bagel, some fruit and a cup of coffee, this random Asian girl came up to me and asked me in English, "Excuse me, but are you Korean?" I was a little taken aback, but I answered in the affirmative. Then she got really excited and started talking to me in Korean, saying that she was really glad to meet a Korean person. So I sat with her during breakfast and we had a chat. Her name was Yujin, and she was in the States to study English and work for a year. Apparently she was going to be staying at the hostel for half that time, because her programme in Korea recommended that she do that. Wow, bad recommendation, much? I mean, it was a nice hostel, but I don't think I could live there for months on end. Perhaps she didn't have many other options, given her relatively short stay and what not, but still... After a while we were joined by this guy called David, who had been staying at the hostel while apartment hunting in Chicago. He was new to the city, about to commence studies at a local graduate school. He had found a place nearby and was going to move into it that day. They were both pretty nice, so I invited them to hang out with me and Amy if they were willing and able, and they accepted the offer.

After breakfast the four of us went to Chinatown. It was pretty neat.

 

There was a courtyard that had statues of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, and plaques that described the characteristics and attributes of people belonging to each particular animal. Naturally, I checked out the rabbit plaque. Apparently rabbits are fun to be around, pleasant, obliging, affectionate, have a tendency to get too sentimental at times and seek to avoid confrontation. The plaque also said that rabbits are blessed with good fortune and are thus successful in business, politics and law. I guess I chose the right career path.

Rabbit.

 We wandered around for a little bit more and had lunch at this place called Lao Sze Chuan, which was recommended to me by an awesome guy in my section at school. I had the cumin lamb dish that he particularly recommended, and it was pretty good, except the portion was so huge that I couldn't finish it all. I reckon that's the case for most portions of food in the States. It didn't help with the guilt I felt for leaving behind so much food, though.

On the El train back to the city, we split and Amy and I went to Grant Park to check out the Buckingham Fountain. It's this gigantic, beautiful fountain that puts on a water show every hour on the hour. We caught about half of it. Apparently the show is better at night because the fountain lights up and music plays throughout the show. But it was still pretty awesome. In general, Chicago's parks and their attractions are very cool.

As we walked around in the city, we came upon a double decker trolley tour, which we decided to check out. The bus stopped at 15 major spots in the city, and the tour guide gave a running commentary the whole way. The top floor of the bus was open, which gave us great unobstructed views of all the sites, but it was so freezing up there that after a while we took refuge in the warm downstairs part of the bus. It was a good tour, we got to see lots of parts of Chicago that we wouldn't have been able to see on foot.

The evening was the highlight of the third day for me: we went to watch the Blue Man Group! So, awesome story behind this. My friend Calleigh McRaith from the Law Christian Fellowship group at UVA Law School went to school in Chicago as an undergraduate, and she gave me this great tip about volunteer ushering for the Blue Man Group in exchange for free admission to the show. So I'd called up the Briar Theatre the previous day to inquire about this deal, and luckily they had some spots open for the 7:00pm show on Sunday. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. We just had to go to the theatre an hour prior to the show to meet the other volunteer ushers, receive training on how to usher and go over our cleaning responsibilities after the show. It was pretty easy stuff. I just had to smile, be friendly, tell people how the theatre was laid out so they could find their own seats and hand them programmes as I sent them on their way. (The clean up after the show was no big deal either.) Just before the show was about to start, we ushers met up at the theatre bar, got given free soft drinks to take into the theatre, and were told that our seats were in the fifth row from the front. What? Amazing! If I'd paid for the show, I probably would have bought relatively average seats located near the back of the theatre. I couldn't have asked for better seating.

The show was phenomenal! I can't really describe what it's about, apart from saying that it's a collection of awesome bits that the blue men do. They played on this huge percussion instrument made out of pipes, they made marshmallow sculptures with their mouths, they banged on drums covered in bright paint to give us a percussion-paint show, they gave us a lesson on how to be rock stars, they waved huge ribbons around while strobe lights flashed... I really can't list everything they did in the show. And they did all their skits without saying a single word. They looked a little eerie with their blue skin and wide-open eyes that really stood out white against the blue. But they gave off friendly vibes at the same time. They had an accompanying rock band who were really good, and the fact that the musicians were dressed in neon skeleton costumes was a bonus. It was all extremely hilarious, weird, creative and innovative. They incorporated loads of audience participation in the show, too. They'd step out into the crowd, literally walking through the audience seats, looking for people to take up onto the stage. I really wanted them to pick me. At one point I made and sustained eye contact with one of the blue men, but he broke it off and went off to pick another woman to participate in their twinkie skit. Man... In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed watching The Blue Man Group: it was definitely one of the coolest shows I've ever seen. I'd fully recommend it (and the volunteer ushering thing too, what a great deal!) and I'd consider watching it again in the future, maybe in New York? I really hope I get picked as a participant if I do watch it again.

So that was Chicago. Man, totally amazing place! I'd love to revisit it someday. Next up: Boston.


G.