Chicago – a mini adventure!

Our connecting flight to Turkey was out of Chicago, so Krista (my roomie for the week) and I decided to make a day of it and catch the earliest flight we could to the windy city for a day of fun before we met up with the rest of the group.

 

After waking at the crack of dawn, we boarded our plane with little trouble (they made me throw away my yogurt!) and in the nick of time (apparently everyone is "early" for the first flight of the day – who knew?)

 

Our first mission upon arrival was to convert our dollars to Turkish Lira, but we were skunked out immediately, as they didn't have any.  After learning the conversion rate was $1.43:1, we shrugged it off and headed off for mission #2: where to stash our bags?

 

We had both decided, rather than risk becoming separated with our belongings in a foreign country, we would carry-on our luggage and pack light.  Genius! Except for the fact that we were in Chicago with 10 hours on our hands and not particularly excited about lugging our bags around with us.  Why didn't we just stick them in a locker and call it good?  Because evidently, lockers in airports only exist in movies like Get Shorty or The Saint and not in real life (something about the possibility of a bomb….I dunno).  Who knew, right?

 

But my dad came up with the most brilliant solution – there is a Hilton attached to the O'Hare airport – why not ask the bellman if they'll watch our bags while we're gone?  As it turns out, my father is a genius as we did just that. Even though we weren't guests, bellman Frank was kind to us and accepted our bags anyway (we made sure to tip him on our way out).

 

From the hotel, we hopped on the Blue Line and 45 minutes later were smack dab in the middle of Chicago.  Our plan was to hit up Millennium Park, see "the bean," and do a little shopping and eating.  And that's precisely what we did overall, a complete success.  A quick 7 hours later we were sweaty, tired, and hungry (again), so we made our way back to the airport. 

All in all, a fantastic day of Chicago fun.

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