Day 27 - Chicago

Today we visited the Field Museum of Natural History, which was all a bit too nerdy to even bore you with. Needless to say it involved a 3D T-Rex movie session.

After three hours of Nerdism, we went to the John Hancock centre, which is a 96 storey skyscraper. We found a tourist desk where a lady tried to sell us $15 tickets for views from an observatory on the 94th floor. We said we’d heard there was a bar where you could enjoy the same view merely by purchasing a drink, to which she told us ‘there is no real view from that room’. After a bit of persistence this suddenly changed to ‘there is a view but it’s not 360 degrees’. We did the math - $15 for 94th floor with no beer or $10 (beer cost) on the 96th floor with a beer, well you know which way we headed. The view was stella!

We got back to the hotel late afternoon and turned on the weather channel to find out that one of the biggest storms in 50 years was about to hit Chicago and the exact areas where we were meant to be driving the next day. When the over excited weather man described the storm as ‘bomb of genesis’ us amateurs took him for his word and were convinced we were in for a big one.

After informing the hotel that we would be staying another night, we did what any normal human beings would do to prepare for the bomb, we hit the pub. We found ourselves at the bar across the road - Timothy O’Toole’s. This was a very serious sports bar.  In total it had 42 plasma TVs showing ‘Monday Night Football’.

Realising that we could be couped up in our hotel room for the entirety of the next day, we headed to seven-eleven to stock up on supplies. Two boxes of Coronas and a bottle of champagne in our arms, Jon thought it best to warn everyone we encountered between the shop and our hotel about this approaching apocalypse. To his surprise most were either unaware of this ‘bomb of genesis’ or not nearly as excited about it as us. We got back to the hotel and battened down the hatches!