On the 4th of July I woke up and lazed around for
a while because Carly & Emily were not due to arrive at the hostel until
10:30. I actually wandered around the
area surrounding my hostel for 45 minutes, trying to find coffee, only figure
out later there was a Starbucks only 2 blocks up the road. Ugh. I
also talked to my mother and she told me that she was watching the Tour de
France come into Montpellier. I have
hardly watched any of the Tour this year, which is depressing, because I love
it so much. When I get home I am going
to try to find the Montpellier stages online, and also try to watch the final
time trial, which goes in and out of Annecy, one of my favorite French towns.
When Carly and Emily arrived, we caught up in the hostel a
bit, and then went to eat at Portillo’s hot dogs while we waited for Sydney to
get into town. After we ate, we went
back to pick up Syd, and then went out to do the tourist thing. Because Carly, Sydney, and Emily live near
Chicago, they’ve done most of the tourist stuff already, with the exception of
the Bean for Sydney. It was very crowded,
but we had fun making faces into the reflection of the Bean. You’d think we’d never seen a mirror
before. After we took pictures there, we
just wanted to hang out for a while before getting dinner and going to watch
the fireworks at Navy Pier. We went back
to the Lurie Gardens and stuck our feet in a little stream there and hung out
for a while, just catching up and reminiscing times in France. We ate dinner at Giordano’s, and their pizza
was not good compared to Lou Malnati’s!
We then walked to the Lake and got a great seat for the fireworks. It was pretty cool watching fireworks from a
marina, with Navy Pier in the background.
By the time it was over, we were pretty tired, and had a ways to go to
get back to the hostel, so we just headed back and went to bed.
On the 5th, we woke up and went a few doors down
to the Pan Hellenic pastry shop (Greektown remember?). The coffee and pastries were pretty freaking
awesome! Sydney had to check out at 11,
so we just headed to Wrigleyville once she checked out and planned to hang out
there until the game started. Syd had
her car, so she drove us all – it was very strange for the 4 of us to be in a
car together! I was a total freak show
when I saw the stadium – I got very excited!
We walked around the stadium and took some pictures. I was the only one who didn’t already have an
MLB affiliation, so I was the designated Cubs fan for the day! Sydney had to leave shortly after, so we all
said goodbye to her, and then Carly, Emily and I had a few drinks while we
killed time before the game started. Once
in the stadium, it was pretty neat, but very very hot. I was not super pleased about that, but it
was fun enough. I kind of missed all the
goofy family things they do at the Durham Bulls games because they didn’t have
any of that at the Cubs game, and everyone there took forever to hit the ball,
so I got very bored. We ended up leaving
after the 7th inning stretch because we wanted to beat the crowds on
the train, and we wanted to watch the sunset from the John Hancock
Observatory. When we got back to the
hostel, Emily started not feeling well, and we got halfway to the Observatory
and she decided to go home and rest.
Carly and I were kind of bummed out because she didn’t feel well, but
the Hancock Observatory was fun and had a great city view. Carly and I went to a super fun tapas place
for a really light dinner and drinks and it was too fun. The restaurant had a great atmosphere, really
Spanish actually, and the food and sangria was almost like what we had in
Spain. It was the perfect end to another
really fun day.
On Saturday the 6th, we all woke up and packed up
our stuff to leave the hostel. We
checked out at 11 o’clock and went off in search of alcoholic milkshakes;
following up on a craving from earlier in the week. We felt so cool, but my milkshake had too
much alcohol to actually taste good.
Once we finished our little snack we went and sat in Washington Park for
a while, while talking and taking a lot of ridiculous selfies. We finally got a little bored, but we were
also totally unmotivated, so we just wandered around for a little while longer
after ending up at a café until it was time to go with Emily to her train. Once at the train station, we came across a
great little surprise! A French
market! It really wasn’t too impressive,
but we did find macarons and we all freaked out because it seemed too perfect
and too good to be true for the ending of the visit. The macarons were nearly as good as French
ones, so we were all really happy. Carly
and I said good bye to Emily, before heading back to the hostel to pick up our
bags, and then part ways ourselves.
I’m sitting in Midway typing this now, feeling so satisfied
and grateful to have spent the last three days with three people who became
family while I was in France. I am so
thankful all three of my core group could make time in their schedules to meet
me here in Chicago so we could catch up and visit. Some parts of it were a little strange
because we were doing things we’d never do in France (driving in the car,
ordering macarons in English, etc), but a lot of it really felt like we hadn’t
spent any time apart at all, which to me, is all that really matters. I hope to see them before I get married, but
if not, at least I know we will see each other in November of 2015! Love you guys!
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