Day 75........ Welcome to the Windy City!!!!

So its all over!! I left camp 4 days ago, and man has a lot happened since then!! After a fun staff party (that Ive only really been told about, as I left at 10pm to ice my knee coz it hurt coz I was dancing on it and fell asleep!!) so the 5 hour coach trip to the city was full of some very hungover people! Luckily no-one was sick (that I know of!) and we arrived in a massively over-heating NYC at about 3pm on Monday. We drove via New Jersey, and I got very excited thinking Id seen all the New England states, as it would turn out I havent, flipping Rhode Island is part of it, so if I want to complete the set I have to go there....and who wants to do that?! I was amazed to see that the cost for a car on the toll roads here is only 35 cents, how ridiculous is that!? We also stopped to cash our cheques (or checks as they are here) which was amazing as Ive genuinely never held $1000 in any currency, it was awesome!! We changed it into travellers cheques when we got into the city, and task that was more stressful than it seemed, as only one place did it and it was hidden in a hotel that not even the locals knew it existed!!

The hotel we stayed in in New York was lovely, quite central to things, and we headed out to see Times Square, which was insanely busy! Honestly its not great during the day, the lights are all on and it doesnt make a lot of sense, but at night its amazing! A guy tried (not very hard or successfully) to mug us by saying things like "your shoes are untied" (I was in Birkenstocks so that worked!) or "you dropped your sunglasses". Luckily we all knew he was an idiot and carried on!!! We trawled round for a few hours then went and ate at The Hard Rock cafe, sadly then I had to miss out on the night out everyone had as my knee was not happy with the amount of walking we did, so it was just me and a bag of peas for the night! The sleep was good though, we were all so tired!

Tuesday saw us sleeping in then get up and go out to see some more of the city. We started at Times Square and moved out, we saw the Rockafeller Center (and Tina Fey filming outside!) and 5th Avenue, I bought some books from Barnes & Noble (the 2nd and 3rd Hunger Games books, which are awesome and English people should get ready to read/hear all about when I get home!!) and wandered round Saks, which is pretty much a smaller version of Harrods. Also saw The Rainbow Room, where Blondie was playing, and Radio City. We were going to go up the Empire State Building but its $20 and that seems a bit ridiculous, so we settled for just seeing it!! We ran into some girls who were from camp, seeing people you knew was really strange, and then went and met up with Simon, who Im at university with. Me and him went to go and get Wicked tickets, which sadly sold out just as we got there, so we got Jersey Boys tickets instead which was amazing!! Helen and Brandon (one of the guys from camp who was staying with us till he flew back to Florida) went to see Mary Poppins and LOVED it, they went on about it for hours!! Jersey Boys was really good, Simon had never seen it and really enjoyed it, the tickets were only $27 which was a bargain!! The guy who played Tommy actually was from New Jersey unlike the guy I saw in London, and his accent was a little hard to understand at times, and 'Frankies' voice could hit the high notes but was very nasally, but it was a fantastic show!! We sat in Times Square for a bit, and at 98 degrees it was still to hot to be outside at 10.30pm but it was still amazing. The atmosphere is great, we sang 'happy birthday' to a random girl who got all overwhelmed and cried, it was really nice! We then got a slice of pizza, which is the best idea ever, and went back to the hotel. The subways are confusing but much like the Tube, although like most of New York, I prefer it to London. Its so very very hot on the subways though, Ive devided vitamin water is the best invention EVER!!!!!

We got up on Wednesday and checked out of the hotel, posted my giant parcel home (I had too much stuff to carry, it took my lovely roommate at camp 4 attempts to pack my bag for me, coz I had a tantrum after trying twice and gave up! Then when I got it unpacked in NYC there was no way it was going back in so I just posted a load of it home, look out for that Mum!!) then we dropped our bags at the train station and headed to hang out in Central Park till it was time to leave. We met up with Mary-Liza, one of the nurses from camp and had ice cream for a couple of hours, then went to get our train to Chicago. The trains are amazing, they have so much leg room its insane, and we were so very impressed......until it was time to sleep on them. It turns out that although they are wonderfully comfortable to sit on, to sleep on they're like panes of glass! I woke up somewhere in Ohio, having been asleep for about 2 hours, FREEZING cold from the ridiculous air conditioning with a massively stiff neck and two very grumpy travelling companions. I slept through all of Pennsylvania, so there's some debate as to whether it counts as Ive been there now, but saw Ohio and Indiana, both of which are very boring once the excitement of seeing traditional red and white farmhouses with big silos next to them has worn off!

It was raining when we arrived in Chicago, as it had been the whole way through OH and IN, typical seeing as me and Helen had posted our waterproof coats home the day before! It was still warm though and we didnt have far to go to get the train to Rachaels house, one of the girls from camp who very kindly let me, Helen and Simon descend on her, as well as already having another girl, Tina, there!! Her parents are awesome lol. And very patient!! We had showers and food and a nap and headed back out into the city. We met up with Paul who taught bass last year at camp and had dinner with him, then he became the world's most enthusiastic tour guide and took us round some of the Chicago sights, then we sat and listened to a jazz concert in Millenium Park. It was a great end to the day, and after braving a thunderstorm to get back to Rachaels we finally got into a comfortable bed and passed out!!

Helen set off at stupid o'clock this morning to go to get a bus to Wisconsin to see some friends, and me, Simon, Tina and Rachael are about to head out to do some touristy things in Chicago! Then tomorrow my LA adventure starts when Lorna lands in Chicago, which Im so very excited about its insane!!! I shall update again when I can, although be warned it may not be until I get to Utah so it'll be a longer post than this one!! Hope everyone's ok and missing me lots :) Ill see you all in about 4 weeks!!!!