It’s a very weird feeling opening up a newspaper and seeing yourself in it. And when it’s a newspaper in a city like Chicago it feels even more unbelievable. Today though, we experienced just that. Just yesterday we were interviewed by the Chicago Sun Times, and today when we picked up a copy we saw ourselves inside!
And after the very pleasant surprise we were off to explore the Lincoln Park Zoo, the last free zoo in the US. On the way there is a lagoon that was frozen over and a group of migrating geese were looking for food on the ice.
Not much food on the ice
From the outside the zoo looks a bit deserted as it’s winter and most of the outdoor cafe’s are closed, but once inside the selection of animals is really amazing.
A magnificent leopard at the zoo
But of course, after a day out we had to come back and get work done.
Today was a day of firsts for us in Chicago. We came out on ABC 7 live news for the first time, we also saw it snowing - or something close - for the first time in our trip, we got to see our first museums of Chicago, and we got to see Lake Michigan for the first time. Yes, we’ve been in Chicago for a few days with a view of Lake Michigan from our window but we’ve never gotten around to going down to see it till today.
One good thing about the jetlag we still have, is that we sleep early and get up early almost every day now. This makes it easy for us to for example be at the ABC studio at 8am, or take a morning stroll down the loop on a Sunday morning. The loop is the business district in central Chicago, but I wouldn’t recommend taking an early stroll on the weekend. It is nearly deserted, and at times can be a bit creepy with shady characters walking around.
We had one such encounter with a shady character today, we were having a warm drink at a McDonald (the only thing we could find open) in the loop when someone came in asking everyone for money. After we got out to leave he followed us, and started shouting all kinds of obscenities in our direction. So we did what anyone sensible would, we avoided him completely and walked quickly in the opposite direction, ducking into the first shop that was open. It was a bit scary as here in the US you never know who might be carrying a gun, and if he was high - he seemed so by the way he was shouting - he might have used it for no good reason.
After that, we decided to leave the loop and head to the more crowded areas. We decided to see a few museums on the way, with most of them having free entrance at this time of year.
The “crowded” areas of Chicago on a Sunday morning
It then started snowing lightly - what they call “flurries” here - and we decided to walk through Millennium Park down to the lake. There we met the local population of gray squirrels that were busy prancing around looking for food. They seemed very used to humans as when we would put out our hands they would come close looking for food.
A few weeks ago, the editor of Business Craft contacted us about featuring our story in the December edition of their magazine. Today we got to pick up a copy in the news stands. And there we are, with pictures of us with the Karen Long Neck and riding an elephant in Thailand, and a picture of Grace trading by the pool at the Field Village hotel.
Today we also got over the intense “waiting list” frustration. This frustration happens when the dates you want to go on are all fully booked for your class of travel and you’re wait listed. The only way to get out of this frustrating period is getting your flights confirmed, and today we got our entire round-the-world ticket confirmed. We will be flying on the 9th of January from Singapore to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo to Chicago where we will arrive on the 10th. After that we will be off to New York for a month, then Miami, and then off to South America.
On the subject of airline classes, most travelers just think of economy, business or first class. But did you know that in economy there can be as many as 10 or more classes? Each of these classes is assigned a letter (eg: Y, Q, M, N, etc) and a number of available seats, and different fares can only book in certain classes. For example, with our round-the-world ticket we can only book on “L” class so even though there were seats available in other economy classes we were still wait listed.
How did we leave the waiting list and get a confirmed seat? Our travel agent knew someone in the airline we are booking and they were able to allocate some seats from another economy class to L class and put us in them. Yes, having a good travel agent is essential to traveling around the world
GoGirlfriend.com is a recently launched online travel magazine for women. They feature interesting, exciting, luxurious, and many other travel destinations, tips, tricks and of course stories. And when managing editor Julia Rosien heard of our story she found it so interesting she put it on the front page of their online magazine edition. You can check it out at www.gogirlfriend.com.
Here is one line she wrote which I liked “Because, in all honesty, if I can figure out a way to do what they’re doing, I’m outta here!”
And before we’re out of here we have to make sure we don’t fall sick along the way, so today we also went to get our last two set of vaccinations before our travels. So far we’ve been vaccinated against Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, and Influenza. We’re also looking at which Malaria medicine to bring with us to help prevent getting Malaria while we are in Africa or places in South America where it is endemic.
We’ve been invited to stay in a luxurious game reserve in Africa, and we definitely look forward to that! It’s in a malaria-free-zone which is great. Afterwards though we’d like to explore some other parts of Africa, maybe going to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe or Zambia, and malaria is a big problem there so we’ll have to be prepared!
