This past week I took a couple of days of with a good friend Mandy Desutter in Chicago. It’s been an absolutely crazy couple of month and the band (Alabaster Box) wanted to send me on a little holiday before we embarked on our massive Australian “We will not be silent” Tour.
So a couple of weeks ago Southwest Airlines had cheap flights on their “DING” specials – which I highly recommend downloading! I bidded on a hotel on Priceline and we scored two nights stay in a Chicago Westin in the heart of downtown for real cheap! We were surrounded by business yuppies so felt a bit out of place in our urban, try hard rockstar get ups!
Upon arrival we grabbed a 3 day travel pass on the CTA for $14. This was so awesome. We had unlimited access to trains and buses all over Chicago – which we milked for all it was worth!
The first day we wandered down Chicago’s famous Magnificent Mile bolting in and out of clothes shops trying to find some bargains. I got to visit one of my favourite stores that I’ve not yet seen in Australia – H & M - which I have since learned was established in Sweden in 1947! I knew Europe had the monopoly on fashion!
I absolutely love the vibe in Chicago. I love the architecture… the skyscrape. There were numerous occasions when I would catch ‘busy’ men in suits stop in their tracks to see what I was photographing high up in the sky. It’s so funny how we can get so comfortable with our surroundings that we forget that what we take for granted is beauty to someone else.
On Tuesday night we joined a friend at the Chicago Tabernacle for their weekly prayer meeting. Awesome to be part of such an intense ministry time. These people were hungry for God to move in their lives and in the city.
Some other highlights of our trip -
Visiting the British Elephant & Castle Pub and Restaurant with Jase Siegfied. Wish we could have been there when they were serving meals… they had meat pies!
Jumping on random – Green line CTA – and finding ourselves on the ‘southside’ of Chicago. We both went really quiet as we realised we were the only white chicks still on the train and all the housing around us was getting really getto. Needless to say – we didn’t get off at the randomly chosen destination – ‘Garfield’ to see some conservatory.
Chinatown – highly recommend a visit to this unique part of Chicago. It seriously is a city within a city. Everything is China! Even the Christian bookstore didn’t have an English Bible. Profound to think of the freedom these Chinese Christians have in the US. We found a little Chinese bakery and tried a custard bread thing and some pastries.
We caught up with friends in ‘Belmont’ – loved that area. Very ‘youth’ and hip. Great Pad thai – yeah I think all we really did was eat… thats how my credit card statement alludes!
We checked out the famous ‘Wicker Park’ and had some teacher we met in the local starbucks recommend a whole lot of venues we should check out while we were in town.
Eating chocolate – What can I say Ghiradelli’s is just awesome. We ended up getting to know the chick who gives out free chocolate… she gave us extra broken ones for free! Woo hoo!
So I feel like we got to experience the real Chicago in just a couple of days! Such a great city… probably one of my favourite!
