My Kinda Town

So after last weekend in London this weekend it was off to Chicago with Dylan to meet Sammy and Dean.

Now there are many places I could start with the review of the weekend. The crap shower in the hostel, the hot receptionist in the hostel with the icy icy heart and come to bed eyes, but instead I'm going to start with Brunch.

On the flight to The Windy City Viner and I were mapping out exactly what we wanted to do once we landed and both of us agreed that the way forward was a pot of Brunch. So once we checked into our ghetto hostel the first thing we asked was where was good for Brunch, a few options were gathered and then we met Dean and Sammy and headed out for some well deserved food.

The restaurant we went to was called Orange, indeed it was life changing.

Perhaps it was the excitement of the four of us being together, perhaps it was dizziness from having not eaten, but needless to say we were in a stupid mood. Our waitress slinked over to the table and the first thing I noticed was her T-shirt. At first it appeared to be a plain pink shirt, however on closer inspection it bore the image of a Liger. Now for those of you that don't know a Liger is the result of when a Lion and Tiger have a baby.

Somewhat blown away by our waitress' bold support of such a bizarre creature I launched into a conversation with her about Liger's Even when she looked at me like I was crazy I carried on, spouting Liger facts left right and centre. The boys thought I was nuts.

After our Liger chat we ordered our breakfast, I had a steak.

The next day at about 11 we had hunger pangs. The unanimous decision was made to revisit Orange and the Liger. However we were to be disappointed, the Liger was not wearing her colors today, her dedication to the Liger cause wasn't as strong as we thought.

On our last morning Dean, Dylan and Sammy begged me to go somewhere else, but I stood firm, the combination of cucumber water, Eggs Benedict and Liger enthusiasts meant we were only going to one place.

If I could buy shares in that restaurant I would.

When in Chicago you have to do something Chicagoey, so we decided to ascend the Hancock tower in order for a nighttime view of the city.

The que to get into the lift was ridiculous, however it did spawn an interesting question 'If you had to be one tall building what would you be?' The game descended into anarchy however when used it as an opportunity to take the piss out of Sammy.

Finally we made it into the lift and after a quick ride we were at the top. There was but one problem, we had ridden the elevator the restaurant and bar as oppose to the viewing deck. No worries though we would stay and grab a drink. The wait to get to the bar was half an hour. Fuck that!

The viewing deck was just 2 floors below, but in order to get to it we had to go all the way back to the bottom and then all the way up again.

More waiting in line. Finally we reached the ticket stand where the unfunniest man in the world cracked a couple of very unfunny jokes.

We were all set and ready to go when we looked back to see Dylan milling around. He was trying to get a free ticket with his media card. Unsurprisingly he didn't.

As we waited in another line to get to yet another lift we were told we had to have a photo taken. Even if we didn't want to the 4 of us had to stand in a line and have our photo taken infront of a superimposed background of the Chicago skyline. We did. We didn't smile.

In the lift on the way up we were feeling particularly stupid and cracked jokes in the crowded lift about having bad stomachs and generally acting like 5 year olds. We got out the lift 45 minutes after we had been two floors higher to have a look at the view. It was nice, was it $20 nice? Probably not.

After twenty minutes we had to wait in another que to get the lift back down the tower. By now we were wondering if we would ever get out of the bloody Hancock building. After a quick photo session where infront of another superimposed background where we pretended to be jumping off the building we were back in the lift going down. Finally our immaturity reached new levels when the voice over the PA shrilled 'Now you've been to the top and know the Hancock tower a bit better you can call it by it's nickanme.... Big John.' We started uncontrollably giggling as the 10 year old boy next to us rolled his eyes.

I won't bore you with more details, I'll leave that to Dean and Sammy, whose blog you can follow here http://deanandsammy.blogspot.com/

It was a great weekend spent with 3 guys I have been friends with since I was 7 years old. The photos will surface in a few days, the others took just a few.