Day 14 - the day Lauren dropped her cake pop

26th July 2013

Today we checked out of the hotel at 11am and had sooooo much time to kill til our bus at 11.45pm.

We got ourselves already, which took a while as for the first time we had to use Loz's hairdryer - the hotel didn't provide one - and because of the voltage difference it took about 3 hours to dry my fringe. Lauren got fed up.

 The weather was almost British, so for the first time we cracked out the hoodies. First stop was obviously food; we had a couple of salads. Mine had goats cheese, strawberries, grapes, oranges and cranberries <3.

We strolled along Miracle Mile (N Michigan Ave). One particular stop was to 'American Girl' which Lauren had been desperate to go to. It made me want to vomit. It basically sells these scarrrrrry huge dolls that have back stories and you buy them all these accessories and you can buy outfits to match them. There's even a doll hair salon. Crazy and ridiculous money. You can buy a doll that looks like you - Lauren was tempted. Thank goodness they didn't have any redheads.

We then had a cheeky cocktail by the river which was lovely. We spent most of the day walking and so covered a lot of Chicago. We walked past a Chicago firehouse (mum).

We also managed to get in our second favourite thing to do - people watch (our first is obviously gift shops). Okay maybe third, I temporarily forgot about food. We went to a 'cake boutique' called Small Bliss for cake pops. There was too much choice so we ended up having two each. I had a red velvet and a cookie dough, Lauren had a cookie dough and a cookies and cream which looked like it had been dipped in Oreo. We saved the cookie dough for last, thank goodness, because Lauren got a bit cocky and her cookies and cream Cake Pop dropped off the stick. If she hadn't have laughed I'm certain she'd have cried. Hysterically. So life lesson: always buy two!

We spent the next hour and a half trying to find the bus stop which Lauren said "would take 15 minutes because I know exactly where it is". So glad we looked for it anyway because we could not have done that mission with cases. 

For dinner we went to a lovely Italian, made friends with locals and had a cheeky bev. We paid the pier a quick visit - nothing about the day was quick - we had 12 hours to kill! -- and then back to the hotel for a quick phone charge then back to the bus stop across the city. We did a pitstop for snacks and water as the journey was 9 hours long. In doing so, Christmas literally came early. A white toblerone is top of my Christmas list every year; you can't get one in the UK at any other time of year. And there it was ...(not for long).

Waiting for the bus we made friends with a guy named CJ. We were pretty relieved about this new friendship when all passengers had to lift their suitcases up into the storage compartment (about my head height). He was a great help so thank you CJ from Louisville, Kentucky!! We managed to get two seats together, and here we are trying to get some sleep whilst travelling to a rainy Nashville. Lots of love xxxx