All that jazz

I couldn't decide whether to make a reference to Chicago the musical or Chicago the band as the title to this post. Either of these suggest how very cool I really am...

So, yes, I spent five lovely days in Chicago visiting some very dear long-term friends of mine. It was really rather lovely to spend time with people who know me - no explaining myself, no small talk, no backstory. I didn't talk too fast for them to understand my accent (which seems to happen in NY). Ace.

It was my first visit to Chicago, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone - lovely city. It feels like New York For Grown-Ups - skyscrapers and bars and stuff, but also clean and safe, with the lake coming right up the side of the city, adding an airiness to the whole thing. They have a rather excellent art gallery in the centre which has lots of very well-known paintings in it (as well as being featured in Ferris Bueller, the mark of true cultural greatness). It was also free on the Thursday evening that we went, and we all know how much I love a bargain.

I also went up the Willis (nee Sears) Tower, and only got a small wobble of vertigo when I stepped out on to the viewing platforms that have a glass bottom so you can see directly down. We ate Chiacgo deep-dish pizza (which was not as appealing to me as normal thin-crust - sorry, Chicago) and went on a boat tour where the architecture was explained by a very keen and annoyingly perky kindergarten-school-teacher-in-training. The sun shone and we ate lovely food from the farmer's market. I had my first breakfast panckaes of the trip, and my first meatloaf ever (I think). We went out for my first curry of the trip, though were left unsatisfied by the strange poppadoms - apparently it's not something they really eat in the States, which is a shame as it's often my favourite part of the meal. We also went to a barbecue on the 42nd floor of an apartment block - I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who lived in such a tall building before. Lovely folks, too.

All-round brilliance, basically.