Chicago to Toronto!

I have made it to Ontario with a few minor blisters and a bit of a headache, but all things considered, in one piece. The first leg of my trip was fantastic. The concert on Thursday was everything (and more) that I had hoped it would be, and from there, it just got better. I met some interesting people and heard some rather obscure things along the way, but those are the tales that make traveling so much fun. To date, “I have trust issues” is by far my favorite, but I will have to tell you about that at another time. Let’s just say the man I sat next to on the plane ride to Chicago, imparted this sentiment on me within the first 55.5 seconds of me meeting him. (Ok, I know that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but if you take away the time that I slept, the time he was distracted by the TV, and me trying to read my book, it boils down to about 55.5 seconds. Looking back, it’s comical, but at the time, I wanted to window to open up and swallow him.)


Yesterday afternoon, Fawn, Jason and I took the train into Chicago and wandered down to China Town. We got moderately lost (twice), but thanks to a handy public service woman in blue, we were able to steer into China Town, unscathed. Along our journey we stopped at Joy Yee’s Noodle house, found a 1926 bridge, and got a view of the downtown, that I’m not sure we would have experienced otherwise. By the time we’d wandered (and smelt) our way through China Town, all three of us had blisters on our feet and the idea of sitting down and not moving became very enticing. We hopped the red line to the Lake stop, and quickly found a Borders to park ourselves at.

The suggestion of hitting up a piano bar had been casually tossed around, but by the time we found ourselves at Borders, all appeal had been lost. We opted to take the next train back to Hindsdale, but much to our luck, we had missed the last train out of Union Station, and ended up people watching at McDonalds for two hours, while eating fries and sipping Coca-Cola. We finally caught the 8:40pm train west. Jason commented on his limp as we made our way back to the house. I laughed at him, which later came back to bite me in the ass, because I was awoken this morning by a pain coming from between my big and second toes. Upon further inspection, I too, was the proud owner of a nice-sized blister.

My morning started bright and early with a trip to the airport, a grande Starbucks, and a boarder crossing. As I write this, I’m a sitting in a candle lit room drinking a vodka tonic. Oh how I love vacation. Steak and vegetable packets are on the menu tonight for dinner, along with a nice bottle of Red. Six whole days of this means that Julie is one happy happy person.