Adam Turtle, Freelance Web Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Adam Turtle

Since1986

Chicago Day 2

It’s the end of my second full day in the city, and I really like my hostel because it has decent wi-fi, which proves what a geek I am that I find it difficult to cope without the internet for a few days.

Today is Labour Day in America (learn to spell “Labour” correctly, America) which is the equivalent of May Day back home. Officially this celebrates the Labour Movement worldwide, for the general public it means a long weekend and lots of places you wanted to go being closed.

My first stop of the day was the library, which was closed. Most of the museums around the city were also either closed or not offering their usual free day so I opted to go elsewhere for the day. I did a lot of sightseeing yesterday (all pictorialized on my Flickr) so today I wanted to do something else. I took a trip down the Magnificent Mile, a one mile stretch of N Michigan Street that has world famous shopping. I’m not much of a shopper but I enjoyed it quite a lot.

I found a Borders (my favourite shop) and read some books for a bit over an hour while enjoying a Cocoa Trio. Really enjoyed that. After I visited Nordstrom Rack, mainly to see if the Chicago one was better than the SF one, which Diogo raves about (and it is better, but still is too expensive for me!). I bought some clothes at Hollister, then top in the view from the top of the John Hancock Center, 94 stories up. At the Sears Tower I had to wait for around 45 minutes to get to the top, the John Hancock was a much better experience. No line, no waiting and a better view of the city with an area where you can actually go outside onto the edge of the building.

I passed a few other cool places on the way – Water Tower Place which houses a huge shopping mall, mostly filled with clothes shops which is unfortunate since I only buy new clothes out of necessity. I should point out that my purchase of shorts in Hollister was due to me noticing, while reading in Borders, that I had a huge hole in the shorts I was wearing. Good job I decided against going commando today.

The Cloud Gate

The Cloud Gate, or the “Bean” as it’s nicknamed, which reflects the Chicago skyline.

Chicago Skyline

Chicago by night

John Hancock Center

View from the top of the John Hancock Center

Crown Fountain

Crown Fountain which uses videos of people instead of the more traditional gargoyle for it’s water release.

I had my first taste of Chicago deep dish pizza today too. I think I got sold a fraud – it was really expensive and while it was a very tasty pizza, was certainly not as deep a dish as I had expected. I got a good recommendation of an authentic pizza place today though from someone at the hostel. I was helping her solve some issues with her computer and she told me about a little parlour not far from here that does the best pizza in the city. It was nice to have someone to just talk to for a change. Luckily I live in the digital age so I was able to talk to Valerie with Skype and talk to Dave back in SF this evening.

I’m quite bored now, so I think I’ll go out and take some photos of the city at night. I’m going to a museum tomorrow so no need for a lot of sleep, I’m sure I can catch up there ;)

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