OK, so I fell off the planet for a few more days. Spank me. In reality, I have a lot going on in my own little world and so I am having to carve out time for other things just to keep it all moving. With that, blogging may be sporadic but no less sassy. With that said, let's talk about Chicago, day two.
Right away when we came out of our hotel we saw a religious crazy. You know I love me some religious crazies because they are a good time and it makes me feel more secure in my own mental issues. The last St. Patrick's Day I was at in Chicago we had Scientologists with scary masks on, and so I was glad that Chicago didn't let me down this time.
And the river was GREEN. Like bright ass green. Fun fact- the chemical they use to dye the river green is actually orange and it was only by accident that the river turned green. It was originally used so they could see if the water was leaking into surrounding infrastructure but since it's green- why not party? Also cool is that the tradition of dying the river is passed down through a Chicago family through multiple generations. I thought that was kind of awesome.
So one of the first things we did was purchase our tickets for the 5:30 pm water taxi because Emily wanted to do it and I had never done it. The bonus is that it was fairly cheap at $29 a person because it was great. More on that in a bit. Then after buying those tickets we walked down to the Water Tower Place and bought our tickets for the trolley. Keep in mind at this point it's almost lunch time and nobody has eaten. This tour is typically two hours long if you don't hop on/off anywhere and it's a pretty substantial loop that you go on. The plan was to get to Navy Pier, get off and have lunch, look around and then get back onto the trolley.
This didn't happen because guess what? There are a lot of fucking people in Chicago walking around half drunk on St. Patrick's Day.
Three hours later, we get to Navy Pier. But not before I had to hold in vomit from having ridiculously low blood sugar, a migraine coming on and basically breaking out in cold sweat because I felt like I was either going to puke all over the trolley or pass out.
(side note: tell me this isn't post card worthy??? I took that myself!)
Anyways. We get to Navy Pier and almost immediately, the smell of warm garbage (it was in the mid 80's and gorgeous outside) and fast food made my mouth feel tingly. We all had to pee by this point so we get into the bathroom and I puke. Obviously. Afterwards, I felt confident I could eat something. So I get into line with the girls to get food and just as I'm getting to the register, my mouth feels tingly again. You know that feeling- your mouth gets warm and tingly and saliva pools in there, yeah. So I ask Amy to get me a Pepsi and I run like a ninja to the bathroom. The line was ENORMOUS and no way was I going to make it. So I do what anyone would do.
I go to the men's room and puke in a urinal.
Thankfully, there were no guys in there and even if there were I don't know that I'd care because we had an emergency situation and I didn't want to puke in the family pavilion with the little girls who were doing Irish dances or whatever performing right there.
Afterwards, I was not eating lunch. I got my Garrett's popcorn (which was as delicious as the trolley person said it would be) and drank my Pepsi. After about an hour I started to feel OK, so we got on the trolley and headed back to the water taxi place.
We snapped a picture before we got on the taxi.
And I took some more of the river as the sun was almost ready to go down.
And then we got on our little water taxi. Which was
amazing and maybe the most relaxing thing we did. It was so nice to be on a boat, with cool people, learning about this awesome city, waving to the locals and having them wave back, and watch the sun set over Lake Michigan. Like, can you really end a great day any better?
Emily and I were boat buddies and if it were not for her suggestion, we would not have been on that awesome water taxi!
After the water taxi we went to the Cheesecake Factory to get some food. Um, WORST SERVICE EVER. I've eaten at that location before and it was delicious, but this time it was bad. The food was bad, we had three different employees wait on us (kind of), we were there for what seemed like forever but was just under two hours because that's apparently how incompetent they were, and then Amy and Tammy got yelled at for having to pee because they were trying to close the bathroom down 45 minutes before the place closes. Um, rude. And THEN, the waitress (the last one we had) got kind attitude when we asked for her to split the bill up. Bitch, we're each paying with cards, don't give me an attitude. I was also pissy about my drink having no ice. Like, who gets fountain soda with no ice? The ice makes the drink. Everybody knows that. Assholes.
Anyways. It was a long walk back to the hotel, I was exhausted and knew I would have to be up early on Sunday so we can make the horrifically long drive back. I ended up getting no sleep at all either night, but overall it was worth it. Tomorrow I'll show you my Sunday pictures and wrap up my Chicago posts. :)