From Washington DC we flew to Chicago and arrived tired from the day of museums. As I looked out of the window of the plane just before landing, I had never seen soo many lights extending into every possible horizon, It was insane! We were picked up by a friend of mine called Collin. Collin was a housemate of mine a couple of months back at University and had only just moved to Chicago to start his internship. We stayed in Collins top floor apartment, which he had recently moved into. The was no air conditioning and that particular night in Chicago was surprisingly extremely hot. So hot you really didn't want to move! We left around 7am that morning to catch the early trains.
We arrived late in the afternoon at the grandparents house, which (in my opinion) is situated in a very "American Idyllic" neighborhood with the perfect lawns and the postboxes next to the road at the end of the front garden (garden = yard here apparently). We spent most of the evening listening to stories from Andrea's grandfather sharing a bottle on Cognac. It was great to just chill out for an evening and take some drunk advice from a wise old man who managed to introduce me to a book about Thomas Crapper (the guy who invented the toilet).
The following day we decided to head to the beach (i know a beach on a lake!) without my surfboard this time :( to check out the magnificent lake and catch some sun which inevitably led to myself falling asleep in the sun and getting burnt (wear sunscreen here, trust me!). It was beautiful I wont look at a lake in the same way again, it really just seemed like we were at the seaside as all you could see for miles was water. I have read that the Lake itself covers 58,000km^2 in total and can get to depth of atleast 2km! Impressive.
Seeing as I couldn't surf at this waveless beach I looked into Kite Boarding, which is an increasingly popular sport which I have always wanted to try. However the cost was about $500 for a whole day, so that abruptly decided against it.
From here I tried my first even corn-dog which was pretty tasty at a popular plce in town called "Prano-Pop". That evening we headed down to the riverside to grab an Ice Cream and watch the very popular musical fountain. Yes a fountain that plays music and is timed with lights and movements to a different playlist every night. It was different.. and really good fun to just chill by the riverside eating ice cream and watching water dance to the beatles. If you ever take the trip to Grand Haven here's the attractions schedule: Click Here.
The morning after we took the Amtrak train ($80 single) back to Chicago from Holland which was a 30min drive away from Grand Haven.
Once we arrived back in Chicago we took taxi to the Hard Rock Cafe to take away the travel hunger (I strongly suggest the Hard Rock Nachos.. yum). From here we took the tube back to Collins flat and then headed off to a BMX competition that was going on in Grant Park! The BMX competition was amazing, we managed to watch all of the trials and visit alot of the advertisement stand where we managed to pick up all the freebie's and plenty of Mountain Dew to keep us going! One of the stalls at the competition walked us straight into a tv studio where all the BMX comettiton were being interviewed. We managed to get to sit right behind TJ Ellis during an interview which will air on tv here sometime soon! If you're interested atall to see the highlight of that day please click here.
That evening we spent with beer on the top of Collin's roof checking out the Chicago skyline and his naked 50+yr old neighbor by accident (not cool.. but funny).
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