Perfect timing. I awoke at 6am Sunday morning, I’m wearing the super snuggliest dressing gown ever, and the coffee is on the go. Usually when I travel to the States my sleeping goes all out of whack, but last night I slept soundly, and woke in sync with my new timezone.
After a perfectly smooth flight and clearing border control in a new world record of 20 minutes (it subsequently took longer than that for my baggage to hit the carousel), I checked in to my fabulous room at the wonderfully named Millenium Knickerbocker hotel and took a late afternoon stroll around the windy city. I’m staying close to the John Hancock tower, all 94 floors of it. My friend Laurie recently ran up the tower so I decided to walk around the outside of it in her honour. Yesterday was cold and windy but even so I bet I went way quicker than her 😉
Neil Usher suggested I should check the local architecture, and he was right to do so, the mixture of the historic and the new seems to work really well here. I got hungry so I went to Giordano’s on Rush Street (well I couldn’t pass on an address like that now huh?) and after being told there was an hour and a half wait I took directions to another branch further South. I strode off purposefully down the Magnificent Mile (they’ve got the whole ‘name’ thing nailed in this city), and on arrival I discovered – yep, another hour plus wait. I settled in with a delicious local Green Light pale ale, and watched college basketball. Thankfully a guy named Chris spoke with me for a few minutes and helped me to understand how the game worked, cheers Chris.
Chicago style pizza is, well… different. It’s more like a bottomless pie than a pizza and even though I was Hank Marvin (hey I can do this name thing too right) when it arrived, I only managed to get through four and a half slices of my six slice small sized special, try saying that after a couple of Green Lights! My dining achievement elicited a frisson of excitement from my kind waitress which had the doubly beneficial effect of inflating my ego somewhat and her subsequent tip. We’re all winners eh? Then it was back to the hotel and I was all tucked up in bed by nine.
Today I’ll visit the Picasso exhibition before joining Susan Avello, Sabrina Baker and John Hudson for lunch in Millenium Park. I’m very excited about both of these things. Tomorrow will be another early start to catch my 9am flight to Minneapolis, and lunch with Tiffany Kuehl before meeting Diane and some of the Thomson Reuters crew in the evening to put the finishing touches on our big gig at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins. I will write more about this leg of my 2013 world tour soon, and the connections I’m making and reinforcing. For now though, this sure is my kinda town.
Happy Sunday, be wonderful to each other.