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.