Got up early this morning to grab some breakfast downstairs at the hotel. Matthew's race started at 9:00AM. It was his first bike race! The race lasted about 30 minutes and they went about 12 miles. Matthew got up to 40MPH! He also finished 3rd! We were all really impressed, especially since he said he was going to get his butt kicked before the race started. It was a ton of fun to watch, I'd never been to a bike race before. After the race we stopped at a place called Rumors for lunch. I got buffalo shrimp, it was tasty, and messy! We went back to the park to watch a couple more races, which weren't as exciting since we didn't know anyone in them, but still fun. At around 4PM we got to Churchill Downs for a little tour. After we headed home, I slept the whole way, no surprise there. Back to Muncie tomorrow morning. SIGH. Thanks for reading about my travels! I'll be putting the last of the pictures up tomorrow afternoon! Back to posting daily questions on my blog!
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Off to Lousiville early this morning! We left at around 10AM with Brian's parents. We arrived and found a place to eat that his parents had seen on Good Morning America. You can see for yourself with the pictures below but I kid you not, this place looked like someone on LSD designed it and then had unicorns come through and throw up rainbows all over the place. It was the craziest place I'd ever eaten. Lynn's Paradise Cafe is what it's called, it's a prett touristy attraction which is something I don't usually enjoy but I would reccommend this little joint to everyone. We went to the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum afterwards and it was pretty interesting. I'm sure lots of you have been there but I never had and it was quite fun. I do have a tad of bad news to let you in on. Tonight I went to Olive Garden for dinner. I have nothing against Olive Garden but it was the first time I'd eaten at a place I had heard of in the past week. It was a good meal though. Tomorrow we go to Matthews bike race in the morning which should be fun. Talk to you all tomorrow. Left for Richmond, IN this morning around 8AM. We stopped at beautiful temple on the way home. It was seriously breathtaking. I'll put my pictures up later but if you click on the link you can see some for yourself. :) 4 1/2 hour drive later and we are here. Ahh, time to relax for a bit before we leave again in the morning. We're headed to Louisville to watch Brian's brother, Matthew, in a bike race. To conclude our Chicago trip I'll let you in on a few of our successes. Chicago successes 1. Spending less that $250 total 2. Couch surfing for the first time 3. Sneaking up to the top of the Hancock building for free 4. Fist bumping with strangers 5. Convincing a girl that she could let me hold her bag on the train because it looked really heavy and she didn't have a seat 6. Finding a 6 foot tall hookah 7. Only filling up my tank 2 times 8. Not eating a single time at a place that I had heard of before 8. Realizing that traveling is what I want to do for the rest of my life I STILL don't have internet access for my laptop so I can't put pictures up yet. Hopefully the hotel will have wireless so I can put up some more pictures. Thanks for keeping up with me! I think I'm headed out to my first bar tonight in Richmond. Apparently they don't card here so I'm sure I'll have some stories to tell, Richmond is a pretty interesting town. :) I successfully snuck into my very first bar. What an experience. It was a complete hole in the wall, but fun nonetheless. Of course it was filled with smoke and beer breath, but I had fun just talking and laughing with new and old friends from Earlham. Some random girl sat down next to me and asked me whether or not she should go on spring break where her ex-boyfriend and his current girlfriend would be going in her group or staying in Richmond and working on her thesis. We gabbed and had girl talk about the situation and ended up never making a solid decision as to what she would be doing for her spring break, typical. All in all, it was a blast. Besides my hair spelling awful and my lungs struggling for fresh, clean air, I would do it all over again. We got up fairly early because we wanted to spend as much time as possible at the Museum of Science and Industry. On the way to the train station there were some ladies standing under a bridge seeming to be handing out papers and such. This is something that happens in Chicago a lot so we just walked past, said no thanks, and didn't even hear what they had to say. After we passed them I saw a marker board that they had written on that said 'It's Ash Wednesday' I turned on a dime and headed straight back to them to get my ashes. Isn't it crazy how you are so used to people asking for money, trying to sell something, or handing out spam, that you don't even take the time to listen to what someone could be offering. 99% of the time it's not anything worth your time. But try to have an open ear because for me, this time I almost missed something really important. Luckily I didn't. On the train a guy came onto our car and started singing. Of course, he asked for money, but he said it we didn't have any that clapping or nodding our heads would be enough for him. He started 'singing' and it was really good! I say 'singing' because it wasn't really a song, it was more an African chant or something, he didn't really say any words or anything. I was so close to getting up and dancing, but I remained in my seat and resorted to nodding my head and tapping my foot. When he was finished I smiled and he threw a fist up at me, of course I returned the favor. Fist bumping with random strangers on the subway? I'll take that. We got to the museum around 1030AM and stayed until closing (4PM). It was a ton of fun and there was so much to do! We didn't make it through the whole thing, there was 1 exhibit we didn't get to go through. We walked through it quickly before we left and it looked to have been one of the coolest ones! Oh well, maybe next time. After the museum we were completely pooped but we decided to find somewhere to eat before we went back to Chris' for a quick nap. We strolled down in Hyde park looking/sniffing our way to food. We ended up at a place called Medici. It's pretty much in the middle of a neighborhood, President Obama's neighborhood apparently. We walked in and it was a beautiful little place, nestled in between a laundromat and a FedEx store. Nothing too impressive right? Wrong. The place was AMAZING. Their food was so good. One thing we noticed after we sat down was the waiter was wearing a Medici shirt but on the back it said 'OBAMA EATS HERE.' Intrigued, I showed Brian. He racked his brain and remembered that he read somewhere this is one of the President's favorite places to eat. Lucky place to stumble upon I'd say! I had a wonderful Salmon burger with guacamole and a pomegranate float for dinner. After a late lunch we went back to the apartment to rest up before a night out. We met up with another couch surfer around 10PM at his house. He invited us over for drinks (which we didn't have any). He was an interesting guy, a former Rugby player and a current pilot. We talked for about an hour or so and decided to head back to Chris'. We got home and crashed. My feet hurt. I love this place. Today was an interesting day. It started out with the best intentions, but that's about as far as it got. We got up around 9AM and eat breakfast at Chris' house. We left for the train station around 10AM. Our plan was to spend the day at the Museum of Science and Industry before we had to pick up a fellow couch surfer from the train station at 3PM. While on the train we decided that we weren't going to have much time to explore the museum. Instead we got off the train and wandered around Wriglyville for a bit. We saw the stadium, a few cool shops, and 234509823 million smoke shops. We saw a hookah there that was 6 feet tall! Brian and I started to get a little hungry and boarded the train headed for downtown Chicago. We were really wanting to try a Chicago style hot dog when we ran across America's Dog. It looked semi-touristy but they were voted the #1 hot dog in Chicago so we decided to go in. For those of you who don't know, a Chicago style hot dog is a hot dog, pickle spear, relish, onions, mustard, sport peppers, tomatoes, and a bun. YUM! It was very tasty, and their fries were awesome as well! We stopped at a coffee shop called Avanti. Brian got a Chia tea and I got a hot chocolate. This coffee shop was recommended to me by a friend and we just happened to see it. It was really delicious, I would recommend the hot chocolate, probably the best I've ever had. After some drinks to warm us up we went to Union station to pick up a fellow couch surfer who is going to be staying at Chris'. Chris is at work and Ruud (the new couch surfer) is from the Netherlands so he doesn't have a phone. We went to the station at 3PM and his train was delayed until 5:30PM. To pass the time we went to Wicker Park. Wicker park had been recommended to me by many people. It was an awesome little town, somewhere I could see myself living. Lots of thrift stores, vintage clothes, and stores full of Chuck Taylors. My kind of place! We didn't get to stay there as long as we would have liked because we had to head back to Union Station to get Ruud. Of course, the train was delayed again, this time until 7:15PM. We figured we would just wait around since it was already 5:45. 1 hour later the train gets delayed until 9PM. After that we just give up and head home. Chris is supposed to go pick up Ruud tonight, if his train doesn't get delayed again. Apparently this is something that happens often. Reminder: don't take the trains in the U.S. All in all, it wasn't a super exciting day but it was fun to wander around and explore, which is exactly why we came. We'll try to go to the museum again tomorrow. Happy Mardi Gras?? :) Much love. Alright, so after I updated my blog last night a few things happened. First of all, Chris told me we were going to be having another couch surfer. Her name is Ashley and he gave me her number to let her know she was good to come over and we would let her in when she arrived. I texted her and she told me she didn't have a ride to get to Chris' (the trains had stopped running). I went to pick her up, it was about a 20 minute drive, not too big of a deal I thought. I got there and she got in the car and she REEKED of alcohol. I mean, it was bad. I don't mean to be rude but she looked like some sort of teen runaway. Come to find out on our ride back to Chris', she pretty was. Ashley said she'd been on the move since she was 13 years old (she's 18 now) and that her mom is literally insane and a whole bunch of other crazy stuff. Not the type of things I like to hear from a girl that I'll be sharing a room with. Brian and I pretty much went to bed as soon as I got back, trying to avoid hearing any other disturbing stories from her. Chris came home late and Ruud wasn't with him. Ruud sent us a message and said that he just got a hostel. He felt really bad that we pretty much wasted our whole day waiting on him at the station but it was alright. At least we knew he didn't sleep under a bridge or something. This morning we took our time waking up and getting going. We woke up around 9AM and went down to a diner called Sher-Main for breakfast. It was really good, fast, and cheap (perfect for us). After that we headed to the grocery store to get some lunch fixings for the rest of the week. We went to the train station at noon to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was pretty cold out but we still managed to see quite a few animals since they had a bunch of indoor exhibits. It was also free, always a plus. We spent a majority of the day at the zoo. After the zoo we traveled downtown a little ways to the mall. We only went because there is a soap store there called Lush. It's my all time favorite soap store and I've only seen it in Chicago so I had to restock. After we grabbed some soap we went to Gino's East for dinner. It was the most amazing pizza I've ever had, which is good, since that's what it's famous for. A little unique tid bit about the place is that you can sign the walls so the whole place is covered with people's names. Of course, we signed our names on the wall and we also saw someone's phone number. We texted the number just to let him know that his number was still on the wall. He suggested that we get the pepperoni pizza. We ended up getting half pepperoni and half sausage. YUM. After Gino's we passed a Hershey's Chocolate store and a Ghirardelli store/cafe. I knew they'd be giving out free samples so we decided to stop in and get some free 'dessert'. BOOM. Walked out with a caramel-filled chocolate square. By then, it was about 9PM and we decided to grab the train home. Is it bad that everywhere we travel we automatically call home? I feel like that's a good sign we'll constantly be on the move. Doesn't bug me! Talk to you all tomorrow. xo OH, we also are couch surfing next to an insane asylum. We've seen our fair share of interesting people for the week. Now go to bed everyone, sweet dreams! :D Today we left Muncie around 11:00AM to begin our journey for Evanston, IL, where our host lives. We stopped at a Gyro place called Dengeos for lunch right down the street from Chris' apartment. Once we got to Chris' place he showed us around his apartment and introduced us to his 'roommate' Sammie (he has been couch surfing at Chris' for TWO MONTHS). Sammie was really nice but he was leaving to sleep on someone else's couch until we left, so there would be more room for us all. After we sent him off we headed downtown for a very quick mini tour of the city. We first attempted to get to the top of the John Hancock building through the side door up to the Lounge. Instead of the $30 it costs to go up the 'touristy' way, we went through the back way and all we had to do was buy a drink at the lounge for an equally, if not better, view. On the train ride there a girl told me to make sure to go into the ladies bathroom, she said it has the best view of Chicago you'll ever see. Of course, I went into the bathroom and it was breathtaking! The funny part is that I'm not 21 so we couldn't actually get into the lounge. So the boys didn't get to see much of anything while I had the best view in the house! After that we wandered around a mall for a while and ended up in a Lego store, it was a lot of fun. We hopped on the train to catch our show that started at 7:00PM. The play was at a place called the Neo-Futurists. It was a really awesome and strange experience. There were 30 plays in 60 minutes. It was a ton of fun. The cost to get in is $9 plus the roll of a 6-sided die. So anywhere from $10-$15 depending on how lucky you are. I got in for $10 and Brian got in for $11. :) After the show we really got lucky because someone in the audience brought her boyfriend for his birthday and she made 180 cupcakes, enough for all of us to enjoy! We sat next to some girls at the show and ended up going out to each with them after the show at an organic place called Mista's. Right now we're watching Alice in Wonderland before bed. Sorry there aren't any pictures, his internet won't sync up to my computer for some reason so I'm having to update this from his computer. I'll add pictures when I get home. So far so good! Tomorrow we plan to go to the Lincoln Zoo! |
Chicago, IL
The plans are underway for me and Brian's next big adventure, Chicago! |