An American Trail: Just blew in from the windy city......

The windy city is mighty purrrdy, but its frigin freezin.....

Chicago has to be right up there as one of my favourite places so far. Its clean, classy, fun, eclectic, WINDY and beautiful.

So, ok, they dont call it the windy city for nothing but, HELLO......

Honestly though it was an awesome place. A bit strange, but in a good fun way. It has a series of rail lines called the "L", short for "elevated" criss crossing the city centre about two stories above your head. The trains all silver and shiny like a strange sifi metropolis movie from the 40s. The streets are very clean and tidy with lovely fenced vegetation plots along the pavements playing music and narrating your journey as you pass historic venues. But its not ostentatious. The buildings are beautiful and well kept but nothing is in your face. You have to look hard to see the shops inside the buildings. There was no gaudy signage. It just let you explore at your own pace. And that was the kinda feeling you got from the whole place. Laid back. Relaxed. Sure there where loads of people on the streets doing their thing, but no one seemed to be rushing. Coffee houses had plenty of customers, and with a Starbucks on every other street corner (im not kidding) thats a lot of people not rushing...

One thing we had seen in the early stages of planning was a company that did Segway tours in different cities, and we decided Chicago would be a good place to do one. We booked our tour for an afternoon starting at 2. Dan, our instructor and tour guide was brill. very patient, lol.....

We watched our safety instruction video, collected our helmets and machines and walked them across the street to a convenient park for our basic lesson. Now i dont know if anyone has ever been on a Segway before but for me it was a little disorientating. The machine is all about balance but not how you think. It is designed to make it as hard as possible to fall off. What i mean is, if you lean forward you go forward but if you lean too far the machine will correct itself, and push back against you to stop you falling off. Its hard to explain but its weird, fun, but weird.
Our tour took us all around the front part of the city, lake side parks, Megis field (the old airfield that was closed after 9/11) and past some of the wonderful old buildings housing Museums and Art Galleries. We zipped around at about 10mph for 3 hours. We saw so much. Plus, i didn't fall off... It was awesome.
We decided do go back the next day and do some more sightseeing, on foot this time and get a bit closer to the wonderful surroundings. We joined the coffee drinkers this time and watched the world go by.
We did find something to change the laid back tone though. An art installation by a british artist called Martin Creed. Basically it was a room half filled with red balloons. The idea was to make us aware of the one thing around us everyday we take for granted but never see...The Air...It was a really simple idea but it was so fun. Running blindly through a room filled, above my head, of red ballons. The child in me was most amused. In fact i think my incontinence featured in former thrilling blogs may have reared its ugly, moist head...Did i larrffff...!?

We had also decided to meet up with a friend of Adams who lives in Chicago. Greg and his family. We met up at a fundraising street fair where his daughter was working. Her boyfriends family run a pork produce business and are well know in the area. They had a food van at the fair selling slow roast pork sandwiches. I dont mean they took their time to serve you, i mean the pork was slow cooked...We had to try some, it would be rude not too....
We managed to meet up with them again for a sit down dinner this time. PIZZA.... well we where in Chicago...Its the law.....