Day Two Hundred and Fifty Seven.

    After I wrote my blog yesterday I had a lot to do to get ready for my vacation since I hadn't even started yet. I must say that it was hard to get focused because I still wanted to hang out with my family, who were still around. Well, everyone except for my oldest sister whom went home the previous night. Anyway, while my family was outside enjoying the day I put a final load of laundry in and got in the shower. Then I balanced my check book and paid one last minute bill before I was finished with my finances. My second to oldest sister and her husband left around 3pm and then my twin sister followed. I was sad when everyone left but I really had to focus on my packing at that point! Once I got my laundry in the dyer, then folded, I could finally start packing and it took me a decent amount of time to get everything together. While I was packing my boyfriend mowed the yard while my Mother and Father were watching a movie on TCM. I must say that it felt very good having my Mother and Father at my house while I was getting ready....I felt like a kid again!

    We took the train to Chicago and it certainly did take a while! I was the most stressed about the bathroom situation because I knew I wasn't going to be able to avoid using it, since it was a 17 hour train ride. My boyfriend and I decided that it would be fun to have some drinks while we were on the train so that made me go a lot more than I probably would have otherwise. I'm not going to lie here....using the bathrooms on the train was horrible. They smelled like urine and had it all over everything. I did my best to just try to get my business done and get out of there. Once it got dark my boyfriend and I watched a movie...."21 Jump Street". I liked it but my boyfriend really didn't like it that much....he really doesn't like Jonah Hill. It's funny because I was already getting nervous about falling asleep on the train and he fell asleep before the movie even ended. I decided right away that there was no way I was going to be able to brush my teeth on the train and I was very glad I made the decision to just wear my glasses. Due to the fact I wasn't going to need to mess with taking my contacts out, I went to the bathroom for the final time and tried to sleep.

    We brought my Denver Broncos throw blanket that I keep on the couch so we would have something to cover up with and I'm glad we did because it got chilly. Even though I tried to get as cozy as possible I must have changed positions about 35 times throughout the night. My poor boyfriend woke up almost every time I re-arranged. I was honestly just nervous about the new people getting on the train and taking something out of my purse than anything else. It's not like there was any real security. In the morning I think I actually got the most sleep for some reason. It was frustrating this morning because there was a lot of freight traffic we ended up not getting into the city until about an hour and a half later than we were supposed to. I just couldn't wait to get off of the train at that point. When we got to Union Station we were about to hop a taxi to our hotel and suddenly there was a huge rain storm. I suggested getting coffee and lunch until it blew over, so we did that then took the taxi to our hotel....which worked out great.

    It was after 1pm when we arrived at the hotel and while I was checking in my boyfriend was running after the taxi which dropped us off, because he left his phone in the back seat:( Luckily, he called his phone via my phone and the driver answered right away then quickly turned around to drop the phone back off....disaster adverted! I was excited that we were able to check into the hotel room two hours early because I really felt like I needed to wash my face and brush my teeth. I decided not to waste the time showering and figured I'd just do it at the end of the day. By this point in the day it was beautiful, so we figured instead of trying to squeeze a museum in we'd just walk around and go to the John Hancock building. It was so amazing....at 94 floors in the sky we saw the view of the entire area and really got our bearings to the arrangement of the city. It was really neat at the top because it was a 360 degree view, plus they had a snack bar so we had a beer! Once we were done there we walked to the lake because it turned into such a beautiful afternoon.

    We had a couple of drinks at a bar on the way back, then stopped at a 7-11 to pick up some supplies for the room and finally had dinner at a famous pizza restaurant called "Giordano's". I really liked the pizza a lot because it was so full of cheese and I've always been a fan of a lot of crust. I think my boyfriend liked it as well, but still not as much as he likes New York city pizza. We decided not to stay out tonight because we were both very tired and want to get an early start in the morning. When we got back to the room we had a beer then checked out the pool, although we didn't go in it or anything. I was very happy when we got back to the room and I could take a nice hot shower! We have a big day planned tomorrow and hopefully the weather will be nice. Well, until next time!