The Trip pt. 3

After our little jaunt around Pennsylvania, on to Chicago we went! After a foggy landing (couldn’t see the ground until we were on it,) we found a Sonic, it was after 8 pm so duh, half-price shakes. Let this be known to all – their peanut butter cookie shakes are divine. It’s like someone took like 50 Nutter Butters and smashed them into tiny pieces and put them into a cup. Ahhhhhhh.

We took a tour of the school interested in C and met with a few different people and made some great contacts. Teresita, the secretary in the math department, was awesome. She’s one of those people that once you start talking to her, you feel like you’ve known each other your whole lives. She was a great contact to make, and she said she’d help us out with anything we needed if we ended up moving out there. She was awesome. We also met with a friendly math professor. It was adorably obvious that he was a math teacher that doesn’t deal much with people, but he did his awkward best to make us feel welcome. We wandered around the campus, which didn’t take long because it’s a pretty small campus. Small and cute.

Chicago is also a better city than Philadelphia, at least to me. Chicago didn’t smell like yucky sewer rat uprisings or like five million diapers decomposing at once. It was really cute too, at least the places we saw. The apartment complexes are basically all the same, but they paint them differently so you can have a little variety. We saw apartments every color of the rainbow and it was awesome. They were probably mucho dinero but I guess we’ll have to do some more research and see. Also, the sidewalks are a ton bigger.

On the recommendation of Terasita, we visited the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is the largest free zoo in the United States. And for being a free zoo, man. It was fantastic. I have never seen animals more alert or fun than at this zoo. It was a little cold but it was totally worth it. We saw all sorts of cool animals that I hadn’t seen in person before, like a wallaby! It was so cute. I wanted one. 

And another thing? Some of these “enclosures” aren’t even enclosed! There’s a measly guardrail between you and the ground birds, and they could totally just step out and wander around. Apparently though, since it’s dark outside the enclosure, they don’t like going outside of it because that’s apparently where their predators are in the wild. But the one that weirded me out were the spiders were just like chilling in their webs, no cage whatsoever. Or they would be if they weren’t doing maintenance on the spider exhibit. But freaking heck, what if you just tripped and landed in a nasty evil poison spider’s web? What then?! Oh. And the worst part of it was there was this concave dark room off an entrance somewhere, so we wandered in, and guess what was in there? Cockroaches. An entire room full of cockroaches. And the glass is hard to see, so you feel like it’s just you and the hissing cockroaches. And then one hissed and jumped at me and I was like UNHOLY GET ME OUT OF THIS TERRIBLE PLACE! C laughed about that one for awhile. But anyway, the zoo was awesome. If you’re ever bored in Chicago give it a look. But don’t go in the cockroach room because they’re evil.

Just another wild, unenclosed bird...

After the zoo, we hit up a Lou Malnati’s which is a famous deep-dish pizza place. And let me tell you, they did not disappoint. While the Philly cheesesteak was just good, this was awesome. First, we started with the freshest Caesar salad I’ve ever had (real slices of parmesan in there, people! And freshly grilled chicken!) and then about half an hour later, our Lou’s Special came out. Having never had deep dish pizza before, I didn’t know what to expect, but it was awesome. It’s like a pizza, just… deeper. I know, duh. But the crust isn’t super thick, it’s nice and crisp and supports the toppings really well. All we had on ours was cheese, tomato sauce (which has actual fresh tomatoes diced into it) and some good sausage. All in all, Chicago deep-dish pizza >>>>>> Philly cheesesteaks. I mean, nothing on the cheesesteaks. They’re great. But I’d rather have Lou Malnati’s any day. Sorry, Pat. Between my Nutter Butter shake and this pizza I was on cloud nine. 

After our pizza excursion, we took a little side trip the Chicago Temple, which unlike the Philadelphia temple (which is still under construction) is not in the actual city, but about 45 minutes outside of it. When we drove up on it I was like uhhh, is this it? But it grew on me with time. It really is a uniquely beautiful temple.

Part 4 coming up!