It really has been a long time since a blupdate. The trip finished over a month ago, and it's been pointed out to me by more than one person that the blog is not finished, so, with the rather large amount of time I have on my hands right now I thought I should finish it, as much as I can remember anyway.
We left off about to see Messing With A Friend, an improv show hosted by Susan Messing, a very funny comedian. Her guest on the night was Michael Patrick Thornton, a disabled actor and comedian who was ludicrously funny. Before the show started we met someone who works at Second City, the most famous of Chicago's Improv clubs, and he reassured us we were in for a treat, as we weren't really sure what to expect. His name was something ridiculously American, some sort of noun like Van, Pedal or Truck. Can't remember. If you see a comedian in the future that's come through the Second City and he has a preposterous name, that's probably him. The night was incredible, a real treat. Hadn't laughed that hard in a long time.
The next day, Friday 28th October, was our last in Chicago. Our flights were booked for NY for early next morning, so we did some things that were still on our list, namely visit a Chinatown and eat proper Chicago Deep Dish Pizza. We started the day off with the pizza, deciding on "Giordano's" out of the plethora of Italian restaurants claiming to have the "original deep dish". The place was already packed by 11.30 in the morning, but they managed to squeeze us in to a little booth. The pizza is all made to order, and takes about 45 minutes to cook, just enough time for a couple of card games. You can probably guess that the pizza was amazing. We shared a small, and this is how big it was:
More like a pie than anything. We'll never forget that first Deep Dish Pizza... mostly because it filled us to bursting. After a massive lunch like that there's only one thing to do - a very, very long walk. We visited Chinatown, and got rather disturbed by some of the things on sale in the grocery stores. I bought a packet of 'Hello Panda' biscuits, which I would recommend to anyone that likes a biscuit that doesn't taste great, but is in the shape of an animal with a sport printed on its front. Bizarre. We headed back to Downtown and walked all around the Loop, which is the name of the area inside the loop of El trains, the Elevated train system in Chicago. We hadn't actually had a donut by that point, despite being in the States for almost 3 weeks, and it seemed like the proper thing to do, y'know, sample the national dish. So we stumbled into a Dunkin' Donuts, and bought one each. While there we saw 2 women buy A DOZEN DONUTS EACH. Surprised they managed to fit through the door. Still, that didn't put us off playing with our food:
After a long walk around Millennium park, taking pictures of the nighttime Chicago skyline, we headed back to Lauren and Lateef's before heading deep into the North Side with them to a real multi-cultural hotspot. Among the mix of Afghan, Chinese and Bangladeshi restaurants was L&L's favourite Indian, where we shared a delicious (spicy) korma, a number 66, and LOTS of naan bread. After the meal Lauren and Lateef took us to meet their friends back in their neighbourhood and we all had a cracking night out, taking in several clubs and Irish bars. It turned out that one of Lateef's friends had grown up in London, so we had plenty to talk about. As it was Hallowe'en we saw some ridiculous costumes, including something called a Nicky Minaj. Not sure what that is, but it certainly looked like a monster.
The next morning, otherwise known as an hour after we went to bed, Lateef very kindly drove us to O'Hare airport for our flight to New York. We had such a wonderful time staying with the two of them, and they made us feel so welcome, we really can't thank them enough. Needless to say, a return offer of a bed is available to everyone that we stayed with over the course of our trip. We left Chicago in bright sunshine, and were meant to land at JFK in a little under 2 hours. Things didn't go quite to plan...
