After another beautiful megabus ride that included a dodgy stop over in cleveland a meal at hard rock and generally buming around on the streets till 1am, we finally hit Chicago and they actually did the best breakfast so far so after that having a shower headed out on a guided tour, i did start chatting to a few people and the tour helped me get my bearings a little and also learned more than i ever wanted to about buildings but there were some decent facts thrown in too. after getting a little bored and feeling like i was on a school trip i chatted to a few guys who were obviously having as much fun as me. after the tour had finished i headed to the park where the giant bean thing was which is pretty trippy when your up close and distorts your image when your inside it probably one of the best things to see in chicago. i also went through th egardens and soaked my feet in the little water stream fountain thing and was amazed by the size of the jazz theatre but as it was so hot didnt really stay to see anyone play. After a while i headed down to the marina had a look at all the boats and got say the one called 'my wet dream' has got to be my favorite boat name ever! after getting ridiculously hot i headed back because i was starting to burn but i headed back through a really pretty park with flowers and gazebos and I also went to the biggest fountain id seen including the famous central park/ friends one!

Later I headed out to see the fireworks for the fourth of july with the guys i got chatting to on the tour. when we got to the pier it was rammed packed and everyone got lost so i ended up having a drink with a guy called danny before we went to find the others we couldnt find them at first so when the fireworks started we just stopped to watch them and ive gotta say some of the fireworks were pretty cool espicially this one that did some weird thing as it exploded, but i wasnt a fan of the cheesy A-team music that was played along with it, it really was as if at the end it was gna say f*** yea! after a while all the other guys started appearing and we headed out it took us about 45minutes to get off the pier as it was so packed, so afterwards we headed to a bar for a few drinks then headed back to the hostel.

Next morning we headed out to the beach which lisa had found the previuos night and we spend most of the day just chilling out and tanning even though at this point I am still using factor 50 dont wanna get too dark! ha! so after a long hard day of lying on the beach we headed back to do laundry so fun i tell you but we decided we had to try a chicago deep dish pizza which actually look somewhat like a quiche but filled with pizza toppings cheese and tomatoes after two huge slices though and sooooo much cheese i couldnt eat anymore so saved it for breakfast the cheap classy backpacker way! After our pizza we headed to the jazz club where some of the other people had gone for the night and to be fair i was pretty impressed the way they plaed there instruments and the stories behind some of the songs and the way he compared it to modrn day rap was pretty cool gave me a whole new understanding and i was enjoying it quite abit apert from feeling tired! so i did actually call it an early night. At least i did see one show in the city of jazz.

due to getting my flight the next day i didnt do too much but headed to the art gallery as it was free and meant to be quite good...too be honest though nothing was really the type of art i like but i did however see some of the greats and when looking at them close you can see just how much detail has gone into them, that was probably the highlight of the gallery. So off i went to catch my plane with a low cost airline and i fell asleep before we even took off........