Chicago Chicago

I had a quick trip to Chicago last week. It was a solo trip, meaning I'm traveling by myself. I love solo traveling. I have a lot of good memories of solo trips I've had. Planning for this one I wanted to change it up a bit. So, instead of trying to find a nice hotel to stay in, I chose to stay at a hostel. I'd be sharing a room with 7 other guys. I've tried a hostel style hotel twice. both were with friends and we occupied most of the space so it wasn't that uncomfortable. I was really excited for staying at this one. I read great reviews and it didn't disappoint. The hostel was neat and clean. Every room had it's own bathroom and shower. Aside from the bigger gym style bathrooms and showers in each floor. The hostel had a community room that you can relax in, eat a snack and surf the web. It has a tennis table and a pool table and people were playing with them a lot.

Chicago is a huge city. It's skyline is way taller and denser than what we have in Seattle. Walking in the street you can feel the scale of it's buildings. Some of downtown's streets are huge, you feel you're taking toooo long to cross the pedestrian line. It's a very busy and touristy city as well.

Most of my time was spent going around the city looking at apartment buildings. I also went to my university, DePaul University. I'll be studying at their downtown campus. I walked around the building and looked inside the classrooms. I found the "Game Research Lab" which is a room filled with video games and students play and research game development in it. Maybe I should "research" there as well haha. 

I had some free time at the end of my trip so I decided to at least do some touristy stuff. So, of course, I went to try the famous deep dish pizza. I went to the closest Giordano's restaurant and ordered myself a personal deep dish pizza. And what a delicious treat it was. I now know why it has all this reputation.

After that I went to Millennium Park to see the iconic Cloud Gate. This Chicago bean is bigger than I thought. And the reflections in it's surface, especially in the bottom of it, reminds me of the weird shaped mirrors you find in amusement parks. You know, the ones that make you: tall, short, slim, fat. Those ones. I continued walking around the park when I found a huge crowd of people gathering around an outdoors theater. After asking around I found out there was a free orchestra concert that will start soon. Having the privilege of being super free I decided an orchestra concert would be the perfect epic ending for this day. and so I got myself a seat among the crowd and ended the day with a bang.

50 City Walk: Queen Anne

For my 50 city walks, I chose Queen Anne as my destination. First, because of the high reputation of the neighborhood and second, well, it's closer to my home. Queen Anne is a very steep hill. To start our walk I had to take bus 13 which went up the hill for several stops until it reached the top. At the top, there wasn't any crazy uphill walking thankfully. We started our walk at Macrina Bakery, a small coffee shop bakery. The walk recommended we get snacks from there but we already had lunch so we just got cold drinks and continued on our way.

The walk took us through Queen Anne's streets where fancy houses were aligned one after the other and views of the Olympics, Puget Sound and Magnolia neighborhood were amazing us along the way. One thing I liked is the different kinds of houses there was: modern, classic, huge, not so huge. But they were all fancy houses. The views were spectacular as well. The first thing I thought of when seeing them was how lucky the home owners are for having such an amazing view to wake up to every morning. 

The next stop on our walk was the Betty Bowen Viewpoint. At it you can enjoy a 180 degrees view of the Puget Sound. It has benches to relax in and enjoy the view and some art installments in the ground from Northwest artists. 

Just aside Betty Bowen Viewpoint was our next stop, Parsons Gardens. A tiny park in the corner of this beautiful neighborhood. One specific thing I liked in the park was a lonesome bench in the middle of the trees and flowers. It was like a place from a romantic movie, a perfect place for a proposal scene haha.

Our final stop was the famous Kerry Park. With one of the most perfect views of Seattle that I've seen. Space Needle in the foreground, Downtown in the background and Mount Rainier in the far distance. The perfect place to take pictures, which I did. It was the perfect end for this very joyful afternoon I spent walking around a beautiful neighborhood.