Windy-pop City

Backgammon on the deck
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Chicago was everything we had expected - big, brash and, erm, windy. We had got ourselves a rather fab deal on Expedia for a smart boutique hotel (the Affinia) for three nights. Unfortunately when we enquired about staying a fourth night, we almost fell off our perches at the rate quoted and moved down the road to somehwere slightly less shiny. We were impressed with Affinia's smart rooms and especially the "pillow menu", ranging from a Swedish memory pillow (Phill hoped it might give you Swedish memories, but the description suggested otherwise) to something stuffed with alfalfa, or something. After agonising over the choices, we tried out the feather ones supplied and decided they were too comfy to change.

Chicago Library and the L
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A quick reccie showed that we were well placed, one block from the main shopping street with two of the top recommended pizza restaurants within another few blocks and not in Little Italy, as you might expect. As always, nice food featured high on our list of priorities but we weren't too sure about the "pizza pie" which Chicago is famous for. However, we did have a jolly nice thin crust pizza and some spaghetti vongole which was more vongole than spaghetti. We also took a shine to a local sports bar where we felt like a couple of the locals eating hotdogs and watching baseball and basketball on TV. One of the best meals was when we headed to the Mexican quarter in Pilsen and ended up in a great little BYO restaurant called Nuevo Leon where Phill was delighted to be surrouned by voluptuous latina waitresses, beer and huge helpings of fajitas and burritos, all for $25!

Chicago skyline sans Sears
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When not eating, we attempted to do a small amount of exercise by walking round the city and occasionally braving the most complicated "metro" system in the world, which is officially called the CTA, but everyone calls the L, just to confuse us further. The rules, as we eventually understood them are: There are several differently coloured lines in Chicago, both underground and overground, which stop at stations with the same name, which you imagine means they are in the same place, but which are actually about three miles apart, so that you can't connect anywhere, other than in the Loop at the centre of downtown where they all run on the same line, sometimes in circles and sometimes not, which means you never know which one you should take and what direction it's going in. The standard fare is $2, or so they tell you... until you try and change lines and find your ticket doesn't work. You then discover you have to spend an extra quarter for the privilege of dragging yourself and your luggage up and down three sets of stairs, across the street, down a couple of blocks and up another two sets of stais, because there are no escalators. Easy!

Cool graffitti - Pilsen station
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Anyway, we agreed that the Sears tower was pretty ugly and gave it a miss, but admired the older skyscrapers while sauntering down to the Science Museum where we checked out Sue, a big ex-T-Rex and some interesting exhibitions on World evolution, American history, and a really pants mock-up of an Egyptian tomb. We never quite managed to get to the, apparently rather cool Milenium Park, but instead took in the different neighbourhoods by strolling through Chinatown, Little Italy, Mexican Pilsen and Lincoln Park with its big "redstone" buildings. We also stopped off at the beach on Lake Michigan where all the college students were hanging out and topping up their tans.

Eeeeee I'm not going in there - beach at Saugatuck
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We had heard the live music scene was good in Chicago. Our intentions to check out Al Capone's favorite old haunt, the Green Mill, were scuppered by the daunting prospect of taking the L out to an allegedly rather dodgy part of town. Instead we found a cute little place on Clark Street, the Blues Cafe, which was supposed to be good for live, erm, blues. It had all the necessary components - small with lots of people at the bar drinking whisky, some nutty people dancing and whooping at the front and a band with a cool but aloof sax player, a funky basist and, most importantly a "hoochie-coochie" singer (that would be a 40-a-day-voiced middle aged female singer who probably has a couple of young men for breakfast every morning). We perched at the bar until the bourbons kicked in and then joined the people dancing around at the front. Sorry, but we forgot to take the camera so no evidence of our bad dancing is on record.

On the beach at Lake Michigan with skyscrapers
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Having explored Chicago, we headed over for a few days to Saugatuck, a pretty holiday town on the other side of lake Michigan. Arriving on a Saturday, we found everywhere booked up. Left with the choice of a very expensive B&B with jacuzzi and open fireplace and something that looked like the Bates Motel, we went for option 3, a rather grotty but cheap motel on the main road out of town that smelled of curry. However, the 25 minute walk to and from town helped burn off some of our inevitably large dinners and we didn't get stabbed in the shower. Next day, with all the weekenders heading back home, we secured a nice place on the water's edge and sat out in the garden playing backgammon. We caught the chain ferry across the river and walked to the nearby beach, but it was too chilly for a dip. Exploring a bit further afield, we took a drive north to Grand Haven and tried sunbathing on its very windy beach, but gave up after an hour, having been beautifully exfoliated by the sand-laden wind. Picking sand out of our ears, we decided to check out one of the local vineyards, where we tasted some nice Reisling along with a sozzled cyclist who was doing the rounds on her bicycle and was buying a couple of bottles for the road. The area is also well known for growing fruit and making pies, so we checked those out too and ended up for tea at a quaint place in the middle of a fruit orchard eating home made cherry pie and ice cream.

One of the original Chicago Cubs - totem at the Museum
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Back to Chicago, we dropped off the car and, having looked at the various options, decided to head straight for Boston and New England for more chowder, beaches and pretty countryside.