So, Chicago. Jessy`s Review.

When people asked me how Chicago was, they were met with a grin spread across my face and a report of the amazing shopping, the interesting people watching, the beautiful weather, the fantastic exhibits at the art gallery, the unbelievable heights the basketball players reached with their jumps, the strangeness of "the bean", the delicious food, the amount of walking I managed to exhaust Andreas with, all of the running Andreas and Katrina managed over a week, the CUTE LITTLE ANIMALS AT THE ZOOOOO, and of course the wonderful planning and the great time we had with our lovely family, Chris and Katz!

We arrived in Chicago to beautiful smiling faces, a bit of a scary taxi drive, and a shocking -3 degrees; which after leaving the blazing sunshine in Zurich, was quite the shock!After bundling up and Chris and Katz took us on a lovely walk around a little part of Chicago, not missing "the bean" which is probably the most famous landmark in Chicago...obviously the picture taking began here! It really is quite a cool structure, and who really cares if it broke the estimated cost of $6 million by almost $17 million(!) It looks awesome!

If you're planning on visiting Chicago, take your walking shoes; not only is the city made for exploring by foot, the shops down "magnificant mile" alone will take you hours to walk through and peruse! I'd also advise to taking an empty suitcase, if you're anything like Andreas or I the amount of things you'll want to buy will make up for leaving everything at home! On Sunday Katz took us around Chicago's shopping highlights...my goodness! Needless to say we returned every day throughout the week to get "one last little thing" from our favourite shops!

It was a good job I walked and Andreas ran so much as the food was great. Of course we had the famous deep dish pizza, which has not been overrated! (take my advice, and don't eat anything for at least 5 hours before this! And please, please, don't forget your ID for beers unless your boyfriend is a superstar and will run back to the house and get it for you!) Mexican food, hot-dogs, sushi (not Anti...are you kidding?!), Ralph Lauren food, big America breakfasts., AMAZING mini-burgers..etc. But we also ate like kings in the house, with the Team making delicious breakfasts of pancakes, crepes, eggs, home made bread, fruit salad..and lots of other yummies. Not to mention the expertly made chilli and lasagna. If Katz wasn't doing so much running, I'm pretty sure she'd be the size of a house by now! Speaking of running, over the course of a week Andreas and Katz ran a total of 42km, with a nine mile (14.5k) run in just over an hour and a half on the last day to end the week in style. Such a great achievement!

We had a couple of great trips, we went to the zoo, the very very impressive art gallery, which alone was worth the nine hour flight, a cute little Swedish place for breakfast, the beach for a few minutes (far too windy to stay!), some really high building for awesome burgers and a equally awesome view of Chicago and Michigan Lake, but by far the highlight of the trips was our trip to watch the basketball. I'll leave this part to Andreas...

And that's our trip! I think that we managed to sucessfully complete 3 week worth of activity into 1 week thanks to the planning, and had the best time!
Thank you so much!

Chicago Goes Green on St. Patrick`s Day

It`s Spring, It`s Summer, It`s Busy

I have been feeling really guilty the past days for not blogging anything. Actually it is not totally my fault, because Jessy`s entry should be here to report on our wonderful week together with Anti and her. So I hope she will feel guilty, too, and send me this piece of writing. Here is a teaser:

Meanwhile, let me give you a quick update on how the things are in South Water Street, Chicago. It is warm outside, so warm that the spring seems to have skipped and we are in the middle of summer here. It was 28 degrees yesterday and the forecast does not promise anything much below that for the coming week. I am not a big fan of summer, I like spring, but I guess it is fair to say that this year`s winter in Chicago - the warmest in like the last hundred years - has already served as spring. We have been busy - Clerg had his second set of exams and is now on holidays but took a part-time position as my editor-in-chief. I can slowly see the light at the end of the tunnel with my thesis and this means there is a lot of text to be read and criticized and he is doing a great job there. But good times are coming, too - today we picked up the long lost son Miku at the airport and after the upcoming wild St. Patricks Day in Chicago together, we are to have a re-union with Riin and O`Neal in Edmonton and a road trip in the Banff area national parks. This is also the reason we have not yet been able to pack our winter stuff, we are expecting a serious fallback to minus degrees. I promise to keep you updated with the green Chicago river tomorrow and of course inevitably, pics from my St. Patrick Day Race I will be running on Sunday.