The colours of Chicago

After our adventure in Wisconsin, we were all ready to get back into a city and do some urban exploring.  Around lunch time on Sunday we pulled into Chicago, where traffic was backed up to Yah-Yah.  We had arrived the day of the Chicago Marathon.

We parked our car a few blocks from the hostel (which was on the marathon course) and checked in, before getting some lunch from the restaurant next door.  We were staying right in the middle of Greek Town, so we gorged ourselves on dolmades, lamb souvlaki and rice before going to explore the neighbourhood.  We were only a couple of blocks from the uni, so that's where we went first.

The Willis tower.  And some trees.

In the photo it looks like a lovely afternoon for a stroll; I was sweltering.

The Talk gets overshadowed by the flora.

We went back to the car and parked it near the hostel, took our bags inside and had a little rest because all that eating and walking around had made us weary.  We used Yelp for the first time during the trip, and found a funky restaurant in little Italy for dinner.

None of us knew why they served the pizza on a tomato can, but it led to a few near-disasters.

After dinner the Liar went back to the hostel to rest, because he still wasn't 100% and isn't allowed beer, which is what the rest of us were heading for. We found a bar nearby which had a special on Rogue beers.  While there we met a Greek bartender named George, who proved to be highly entertaining and invited us to visit his bar, just over the road from the hostel.  We wrapped up the night pretty early and went to get some sleep.

None of us slept very well, as the hostel we were staying had no air conditioning, and had long ago boarded its windows shut (presumably because it did, at one stage, have air conditioning).