this morning (she conveniently lives just two blocks north of my place), it seemed like it paid off nicely. The place was quite big, roommates all students, one medical it seems.The person whose room DG inherited, who is now technically subletting the apartment to DG, insisted that both she and her newly-wed husband would give us a tour of Hyde Park. They took us in their car and drove us around the nearest shopping areas and the university area, mostly places Trillian and I had already been exploring these past days. Still, it was a nice gesture and they let us make a stop at the currency exchange, where we quickly acquired a 7-day-CTA-pass for DG so we could all go downtown later on.
The other new piece of information that we got from this tour was that we had pretty much seen everything. Of course, not the inside of the university buildings or hospitals but we had now been to pretty much every "place of interest" in Hyde Park. Going further west or south (as Trillian and I had also learned from our own experiences) was pretty much off-limits. East is Lake Michigan and north was downtown Chicago, a place with also not that many more things for us to see anymore. Yes sure, we would have to go up the Sears tower, see Navy Pier and maybe a few museums and we needed to catch some night life around here. But it doesn't seem as daunting a task as to "do" New York City or even a town like Munich "in a week". Either we haven't really found out yet what a tourist is supposed to do around here or there just isn't that much to see.
Again, I'm speaking from a tourist's perspective here. This has nothing to do with what we'll be doing professionally and socially once I start working at the hospital or once we go see the Bulls take a beating by the Pistons on Thursday ..
Anyway, I was babbling away there for a minute. DG's landlady dropped us off at the place called "Potbelly" where I got one of those delicious sandwiches on day two.
DG, not having eaten since the plane ride yesterday, seemed to enjoy that part, only being disappointed by the fact that her "juice" really only contained 25% of "actual juice". Yes, things can be confusing around here.
We then took the number 6 bus back up downtown, where we attended to DG's amply-voiced caffeine needs. Something about helping her normalize her circadian rhythm. Whatever, DG, I know a junkie when I see her ;)
Just kidding .. I think.
A hot chocolate for me, as well as a café mocha, a white chocolate mocha and a double espresso for the ladies later, we felt ready
to go into the heart of town.
When we reached the corner of State and Madison, the origin of Chicago's street naming system and purportedly the very center of this lovely city, events started getting out of hand. Out of my hands that is. The ladies' energy suddenly seemed independent of their caffeine levels and they purposefully steered into the stores.
They were in full shopping mode.
I did feel out of place and as any guy will know, full shopping mode is a force of nature to be reckoned with.However, this place,
Sears, must have been a disappointment since the ladies found me in the electronics department (which Sears mercifully had, a husband/boyfriend-daycare-center) only about 15 minutes after entering the store saying that it was a bust.Hooray, shopping-mode suspended!
Now growing increasingly aware of priority number one, food. Since DG wasn't particularly fond of the idea of spending tonight alone at her place again (her roommates wouldn't return from spring break until tomorrow) and Trillian and I didn't have a mattress for her at my place we decided to all crash at DG's new apartment for tonight. We wanted to cook our own meal but we would need supplies for that.
So where would we go but our own good-old ..
About an hour later we emerged happily, with lots of food in plastic bags in our hands
and waited for the green line to bring us back south to Hyde Park.Note that today's weather chose not to let us see the lake from here.
When we arrived at Garfield Station, which is south of downtown and west of Hyde Park, we had to wait for the number 55 bus for quite a while. There was only an average number of people asking us for money or to "help the homeless" that we had to actively ignore but there were a few more groups of people loitering around us, none of them white or even hispanic. While the bus still wasn't there after about half an hour, actually a police car was. Standing across the street, officers apparently staring purposely at us white folks and our half a dozen bags of groceries. Apparently, they waited for us to get into the bus. I for one thought they might as well have picked us up and brought us home if they worried that much. Anyway, the girls said they didn't want to transfer at that station anymore. So that effectively bars the L-train for us down here and we'll have to keep taking the number 6 bus up and down the shore from now on. Bugger.
Anyway, after arriving safely back in Hyde Park, we came by my place to drop off some of the groceries and pick up things for the sleepover and then went to DG's place. From there we went and bought some fresh vegetables, witnessed DG pick up a couple of hundred bucks at an ATM to pay the rent later and then hit a liquor store. Naturally, I tried all the booze they offered for free in there - corona in a can was a bust though. Tasted just like regular Corona - which was terrible, lemon or not. Anyway, I had to take all the liquor on my tab since of course, Trillian didn't have an ID on her. Probably made me look really good to be buying booze with two girls who couldn't or wouldn't prove to be over 21.
Oh well. We then started cutting up all the vegetables and improvising something edible out of them (yes, I did have a part in it that went beyond documenting it!).
After toasting with the stuff we had taken out of the liquor store
we went on to have a quite tasty meal, surprisingly so since it must have been healthy as heck, what with no meat, no grease and probably tons of fiber and vitamins and all.
I'll make up for it with a donut or burger or something tomorrow.
