It wasn't that Windy a City...

With Cincinnati ten hours behind us we reached Chicago late morning. Figuring out which bus to take was pretty easy (the hostel told us...) and we got off at what the driver called 'Buckingham Palace'. We thought he was taking the piss out of our accents until we realised we were right next to Buckingham Fountain – one of the largest fountains of its type in the world. America really is a country of 'World's Somethingest Something'. Even in places we're going to like St. Louis, it has to be described as the 'second largest city in Missouri' or similar. I figure Li and I need superlatives to go with us on this trip too – answers on a postcard in our comment box!

Anyway, the hostel was lovely. Run by the Hosteling International group, it was remarkably clean, the rooms were huge and the facilities on site included a massive kitchen, group recreation area with pool table etc. two TV rooms and a large lending library. Wi-fi wasn't free but we managed to steal the unsecured connection from the café next door. Being an HI hostel, rooms were single sex so Li and I were apart at night. Li shared a two bunk room with a friendly Korean woman and I was in a room with four guys from the UK (not sure where) who were all living in London once they finished travelling. They were flying and their route was a lot less direct than ours. They'd started on the East coast, flown into the midwest and were headed back out to New York before going to L.A to finish the trip.

We didn't do much on our first day except take in the Magnificent Mile – Chicago's famous high street area and, because I thought it'd be cool, we went uptown to the world's only Threadless retail store to get a couple of cheap but very awesome shirts.

Day 2 was a LOT more eventful. Upon finding coupons in the hostel, we decided to head over to Navy Pier to rent a couple of bikes and ride up the side of Lake Michigan. The people at the rental shop were lovely and we hired a pair of hybrid bikes (kind of a cross between a racing and mountain bike) and took off heading North. We leisurely cycled ten miles up through the parks and along the shore and came to a beach at the end of the trail. We locked up the bikes and went for a quick paddle. Then it got interesting. Li's key broke off in the lock, meaning she couldn't get the bike back. Seeing as we only had them for another hour, this was a problem. We figured the best option was for me to cycle back and explain our predicament and hope they didn't charge us through the nose for it all.

Ten miles and an hour later I made it back to the shop and, in my tired, sweaty state, told them about the problem we had. I expected them to hop in a car with a rotary saw and rescue Alison. What they actually did was hand me a pair of bolt cutters (the kind you use to cut through chain link fences) and let me use a bike for the day until we recovered the other one. Not wanting to wade through crowds of people by the beach again, I took to the Chicago roads and, some might say miraculously, did not die. I made it to Li in no time, satisfied and with a new idea for a London based project (see my NEW blog at http://ozonabike.blogspot.com).

Now, they'd warned me at the shop that, while possible (they'd done it before) cutting through a solid bar lock with bolt cutters really sucks. Instead of being able to cut through the lock, the process was more like grinding it down, one layer of molecules at a time. After an hour we were maybe halfway through. Throughout the ordeal people kept on coming up to offer advice or simply comment on our situation. Hardly anyone thought to question why we were apparently stealing a bike in broad daylight. Eventually The Nicest Man in America came by and offered to cycle home to get a hacksaw. He returned less than twenty minutes later with a saw and cold beers as well! He made it through the lock in no time and we were on our way. Another ten miles (we did a LOT of cycling that day) and we were back with the bikes for the nice folks at the rental place. Vowing to only ever use combination locks from then on, we took the bus home in search of dinner.

Dinner was an ordeal in itself. Not through any problems or adventures but just the sheer size of what we had to eat. On this trip we're endeavouring to sample as many local 'delicacies' as possible. For Li, it's been an adventure in cheese-coated food so far. For me, it's meant eating salad for every other meal in an effort to stay healthy! We were doing well but Chicago nearly had us beat. The famous Chicago deep-dish pizza is a monster never to be taken lightly. Ours was over an inch deep with a thick pie crust around the rim and enough cheese inside to make a buffalo cry (thanks again Li). We ordered a medium (graciously paid for by Alison in return for my efforts earlier) and made it four slices in before giving up and taking the rest home for dinner the next day. My sinuses were packed with cheese and dough.

Having whizzed past a number of attractions the previous day (FOUR TIMES in my case), on our third day in Chicago we decided to take a look at a few of the free places of interest that the city had to offer. We started off in the zoo which, for a free outing, was incredibly good. Plenty of animals (some you wouldn't see in London or Bristol) plus a nice open park space to wander around. Next was the botanical conservatory which was equally impressive and, again, our favourite price! Just after lunch we decided that it was time to spend a while in the sun and we headed down to the shore of Lake Michigan for a swim and a lie on the sand. Summer be damned because the lake was FREEZING. It was a pleasant contrast to the burning hot sand, however.

Once dried and dressed again, we walked into town in search of the Museum of Contemporary Art which, being a Monday was closed. Of course. Bugger. While the city is supposedly like New York in terms of nocturnal activity, all of the museums and galleries seem to close early on weeknights. To console ourselves we walked a bit more of the Magnificent Mile, window shopped (Li now has a list of things to buy in San Francisco), had a bun and went back to the hostel to play some pool and pack. Our next stop was to be St. Louis. Our first proper stop in the American midwest.

Comments from Li:

Okay. Everyrthing in the US really does have to be the world's somethingest-something, and if it can't be that then it has to be the second or even third most somethingest something. E.g. the world's (or USA's) third widest cable bridge, as if the first and second widest cable bridges also make note of that sort of fact. Anyway. Day 2, and Oz has just set off back to the cycle shop with my broken key. I hang out for a little while by the bike – luckily we parked them right next to a water fountain. I consider going swimming with all my clothes on because I was really hot, but decide against it and instead wander into the nearby neighbourhood to find a magazine to read at the 7-Eleven. I then proceeded to read the whole magazine cover to cover, and I learned that (apparently) women who eat a bowl of cereal a day in the month before they start trying to have babies are more likely to conceive a boy. Supposedly (I have my doubts about this). About 10 minutes after I've finished, Oz appears sweaty and out of breath with... a pair of bolt cutters. Great. So we start grinding away at the lock. Many people tell us, “You can open those with a bobby pin,” “You're going to be going at that for a long while,” “You need a hacksaw,” “You need a blowtorch,” until, as Oz said, the Nicest Man in America (otherwise known as Our Hero) saved us from our predicament.

The pizza we had was AWESOME and I don't know why Oz was complaining! It was stuffed pizza, so it had a thin base, then a thick layer of cheese and whatever else you'd usually put on the top, then another thin layer of base, then tomato sauce on top. Tasty! Though we did have the surliest waitress ever, even though we gave her a New York tip (most places in the USA expect you to tip around 15%, though in NYC they demand a 20% tip off you). She did counterbalance the kind of frighteningly friendly and somewhat hyperactive man we had serving us the day before – we went to an English style pub, which was kind of like an English pub but wrong in many subtle yet glaring ways.

Now I'm going to bitch a little bit, because I wanted to go to the Chicago History Museum, which we actually walked past when we were trying to find the Museum of Contemporary Art. We'd previously decided we were prettymuch done with art museums after NY, also Oz owed me a museum because he made us go to the Holocaust Museum in DC. But no, we had to go to the Contemporary Art Museum. Which was shut. Then the lady in tourist information said that the Chicago History Museum was free that day, only by then it was too late to go back. Well, I didn't get sore about it for too long (but I'm totally bearing a grudge about this so can force my museum choice on Oz in the future...) because I didn't want to be a grumpyguts. Also we went in H&M and I found lots of nice autumnal clothes which were very cheap – even when the dollar is $1.85 to the pound, when the prices have just changed the £ for a $ it's still really cheap :D So I decreed that we have to find an H&M in San Francisco so I can buy lots of things. Does that count as a museum choice...?