Chicago

Saw this and thought of mum and her serious addiction to cooking...miss home meals already!

Jazz in the park...with a beer and our very own ´hostel´ made pasta.

This photo was taken quite early on. We got there at 6, an hour before the jazz started, and found ourselves a good spot. Little did we know what we had in store! By the time the show started hundreds of people started to arrive and we might as well of had people sitting on our laps! If a tiny bit of grass was showing between our blanket (sheet from the hostel!) and the next persons then somebody would sit there. We even had people come along a place a chair right in front of us...it really was a dog eat dog war! We could only laugh but it was a great night just chilling with a live jazz band. 

The jazz stage all lit up at night fall.

Day two in Chicago we headed to the Lincoln Park zoo...best zoo we´ve ever been to and it was free!

A seal show we went to see. It wasn´t a cruel touristy show it was an open viewing of the zoo keepers making the animals do certain things to check the health and fitness of the animals. If the different animals didnt want to take part then the keeps left them alone. Here the seal is waving so that the keepers can check its flippers for any damage. The shows are only once every other day so we were lucky to catch it.

Otters...these guys were so funny.

Seal coming to say hello...I won´t bore you with too many animal clips I promise!

Leopard...gorgeous animal!

Russ thought it´d be funny for me to have a photo taken with the bears nuts! NICE!

This hippo had a massive enclosure but this part was literally a pool full of fish. The hippo would literally flop into the water, walk along the ground of the pool stepping on anything in its way and catch whatever fish he fancied for dinner. Catching the fish was so effortless. He just swam/walked, opened his mouth and an fish, in the wrong place at the wrong time, just ended up in his stomach within seconds! 

The lion enclosure

Perparing dinner at the hostel...Spaghetti Bolognese. Was so amazing...oh the little pleasures in life!

Chicago down town at night

We wanted to see a show and this was the cheapest! Circque de soleil. I don´t know how we managed it but we had to practically ran across from our hostel to the other side of downtown Chicago to get to the show on time. By the time we were there and got over and sweating and panting the show was over. It only lasted about an hour!

Most impressive part of the show. This was a sphere cage with three motorcyclist going around the inside walls at all angles while a man stood in the centre! Crazy! (Reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer has loads of attempts to ride one full vertical lap of the cage to win money)and keeps landing on his head!)

Navy Pier was a great place day or night with loads of entertainment, bars, fun rides, shops and restaurants.

Looking back at the sky scrapers from the pier...stunning!

We asked an old guy to take this photo and he really didn´t have a clue! We had 2 pictures of his nose before this one!!