I survived jet lag!

Woohoo! I survived what I would consider my most gruelling trip ever.

Let's start with the time spent on the flights and transits alone: 51 hours! It's changed my opinion of air travel forever. Going there was more punishing and in a way makes the coming back seem more bearable. It entailed 3 transits: Narita, Portland, and Minneapolis. By the time I was on the final leg, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I used to be one of those people who think flying was part of the fun of going away. I used to get all excited about the idea of going to the airport, about making full use of the flight entertainment, and I actually ate up all the food they serve. Well, not anymore! They kept running out of chicken which means I had to eat beef stew. Urgh.

And you meet with all sorts of people on the plane. On the longest leg back (from Minneapolis to Narita), I sat with this nice lady from Minnesota who was accompanying her husband to Shanghai. She hoped I have a safe journey back home and that the conference was worth all this travelling (erm, nope). On another short (thank goodness) flight, I had to sit beside this PRC man who swore and spit in the barf bag and put it back in the seat pocket, twice! But most of the time I don't talk to the people simply because I was too tired. It's going to take at least a few months for me to get over this flight fatigue. And no more Northwest, if possible. One flight attendant actually chit-chatted with the passengers while chomping on chewing gum while there was another matronly one who looked like she would stare down any passenger who dares to misbehave on her flight. It was actually quite a funny sight when you juxtapose it with the Sin8apore Girl. :)

The weather there was, too, a new experience. The temperature was between -1 to 4 c (the wind chill was probably colder) and it snowed. :)

The wind was so strong that the snow was falling horizontally and hitting you straight in the face. The brutal wind also battered my umbrella as I was walking along the river and I had to buy a new one, whose spokes were also slightly bent by it. It was really an effort walking in that kind of weather, and I had to occasionally stop and seek refuge in nearby buildings. I couldn't capture the falling snow on camera, but did take a picture of an area covered in snow while on the plane.

The buildings below are the Wrigley Building (left) and Tribune Tower, which are the landmarks I use to navigate around the city. They are the home of the chewing gum company and the newspaper Chicago Tribune respectively, and the newspaper founder got his correspondents to collect stones and bricks from all over the world and embedded them in his building. Which is a cool idea, except that I don't think they always got the bricks through entirely legal means. Some were after all, from very important sites where they don't give out pieces for free, like Taj Mahal and Great Wall of China.

Because the weather wasn't great for photo-taking, and I didn't feel like whipping out the camera too often since I was walking the streets by myself most of the time, I don't have many photos, and most were of buildings.

The above is an interesting edifice though, called "The Bean" and must be the most photographed structure in Chicago. It's one of the numerous sculptures to dot the city. I also went to the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the must-visit museums there with a strong collection of works by famous people like Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. I'm just a curious tourist and not art aficionado though, and so walked through the galleries fairly quickly, in about 1 1/2 hours. Some people just stood in front of the paintings in this deep, appreciative silence, but I was busy snapping away!

The food there is nothing to write home about. I had mostly sandwiches and wraps. The most delicious thing I ate there was actually a US$1.70 pipping hot teriyaki chicken bao which I devoured in seconds, so cold and tired I was. They seem to take their pizzas seriously though.

Chicago's specialty is deep-dish pizza, or stuffed pizza. Essentially, they make their crust deep and fill it with lots of cheese and other ingredients. I tried the mushroom and shrimp combi at Giordano, 1 of the recommended restaurants but I've never been a big pizza fan so I can't really rave about it. Their garlic bread was nice and toasty though.

All in all, I wish I was able to stay a few more days in Chicago and maybe the city would grow on me a bit more. The weather was just too severe when I was there and because of my hypervigilance and jet lag, I was a bit too tense and disoriented to thoroughly enjoy myself. Many a times I was walking around the city by myself and there were many people begging on the streets but they seem generally harmless. I was even tempted to give them the coins that I didn't know how to use. Still, I decided to veer on the side of caution and walked away quickly.

One of my favourite moments in the city was during the last morning, just before I went back to the hotel to check out. The wind had stopped and the sun managed to beat the gloom, finally. I walked among the brisk peak-hour crowd, just enjoying the cold weather while sipping on some delicious hot chocolate. Ah, this is the life!