Cool Chicago

We got a much needed break from the usual with fall break a few weeks back already. Joel and I along with a few other exchange students jetted off to Chicago for a long weekend, and I would have never expected how much I'd fall in love with the windy city.

Our hostel (Holiday Jones) was located in the hip Wicker Park area, which was full of cute little shops and quirky restaurants, bars and cafes. I just have to say that I have never been to a hostel this nice. We paid around $34/night for a private room that was cleaner than any other hostel I've ever stayed at. The staff was extremely friendly as well, and we got some nice tips on what to do around the city. The location was honestly perfect. The metro took us there straight from the airport in 30 minutes, and the ride downtown took less than 10 minutes. If you ever find yourself in Chicago, definitely look up this place.

On our first real day, Joel and I explored downtown and spent about 3 hours at the Apple Store because the camera on my phone suddenly decided to stop working. Chicago was also super cold, which actually made me strangely happy. I never really thought I liked the cold, but the seemingly never-endless hot days in Arkansas were somehow getting to me I guess. Now that it's been a while and Arkansas is starting to cool down quite rapidly, I'm wishing I'd never thought this way. Oh well...

That night we also got tickets to a pre-season basketball game with the Chicago Bulls playing against the Atlanta Hawks. I've never really been a big basketball fan but I actually really enjoyed the game, which turned out to be quite intense in the end with the Bulls catching up and I think beating the Hawks by one point in the last second?

A "German" style house in Wicker Park.

The next day, Joel and I had signed up for a food tour in the Wicker Park/Bucktown area we were staying in. This was definitely one of the, if not the highlight of our trip for me at least. This was a 3 hour walking tour centered around local restaurants, but we also got an intense crash course on the area itself and especially the architecture. The history of Wicker Park is actually pretty interesting, and it wasn't really surprising that the fanciest of the buildings are going for over a million dollars... 

Our food tour in pictures.

The different foods we got to taste on the tour were a traditional Chicago hot dog, some amazing hot chocolate from Mindy Segal's hot chocolate themed restaurant (with to-die-for homemade marshamallows!), pizza and hand crafted beer from Piece, a delicious falafel pita from Sultan's Market and finally some crazy good, made on the stop liquid nitrogen ice cream from iCream. 

First row: Mindy's Hot Chocolate and Bucktown.

Second row: Yes we went to the bean. And random downtown.
Third row: Chicago selfie and Joel in a bear suit in Urban Outfitters.
Fourth row: Our Shaw's Crab House lunches, and cheering at the Signature Room Lounge.
Last row: View from the 95th floor of the Hancock tower, and night skyline from Navy Pier.

The rest of the time we spent exploring the different areas, mainly Bucktown and downtown (the Loop). On Saturday night we had tickets to go see A$AP Ferg and Skrillex on Navy Pier, and despite lining up for ages we ended up having quite a good time. I've never really listened to Skrillex and it's not my type of music, but the show was quite incredible. Afterwards we met some of the other exchange students in the Hancock tower and our Chicago holiday came to the perfect end when while still at the end of an hour-long line we were for some reason handed the best table of the place with an insane view of the city.

Thank you Chicago. I can't wait to come back.

Partyin' in Memphis

Beale Street.

Two weekends ago around 20 international students hopped on a Megabus that drove us from Little Rock to Memphis! $10 and 2,5 hours later we arrived in one of the southern music meccas.

On our first night we decided to check out the famous Beale Street which is filled with brighter than bright signs, numerous bars, live music, and drunk people.

Met some guys from the military.

Slight size difference between mine and Lilja's drinks?

Live jamming in a park on Beale.

We had a good night bar hopping and drinking all along Beale, and woke up to a nice and hot day of touristing around Memphis. I've heard really conflicting opinions on Memphis. Some people (many of who at least at some point used to live there) seem to love the place, other people shook their heads when they heard of our plans, and asked us why on earth we would wanna go visit?! I'm somewhere in between. I definitely thought it was worth visiting, we had some good food (probably the best quality and value brunch with mimosas, twice in a row, at the Majestic Grille!), walked around a bunch, saw some sights.

Joel and Nicolo as tourists.

I ended up not wanting to spend a bunch of money on the "must-sees", like the Civil Rights museum and the spot where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot, or Elvis Presley's Graceland. Instead Joel and I walked around a lot and stopped by some cute little shops. The only sight-seeing we really did was the Museum of Rock and Soul, and the Gibson Guitar Factory right across the street. I had a great time, but I have to say that Memphis was for some reason super dead, although completely charming as well. I don't know if we were there at the wrong time or something, but even on a Saturday afternoon, the only people we saw were at Beale Street. In the surrounding areas we saw maybe a total of 5 cars as well as a bunch of abandoned houses, shops, and even an entire mall with nothing left in it.

Although a lot of the shops we went in to were quite touristy, they were a lot nicer than most touristy shops I've gone in to!

The Peabody Hotel (which we unfortunately did not stay at) is known for it's resident DUCKS!

After a day of walking around we decided to have dinner at the famous Rendezvous, which I thought was decent enough, but somehow just... could have been a bit better to be honest. Maybe dry ribs just aren't for me.

Rendezvous with (L-R) Eyvonne, Anne-Lise, Inès and Danielle.

After dinner we decided to check out the nightlife in midtown. We ended up at a random house-partyish type of gig for a bit, and then continued on to a bar that had live music for about a half an hour, but some really good drinks instead. Unfortunately I have no photos :(

Our bus back wasn't meant to leave until 10PM, so we still had the entire day on Sunday to get some damn good brunch (seriously, the silent-movie-theater-turned-restaurant Majestic Grille was awesome), walk around, listen to music and see Memphis.

Sunset as we drove out of Memphis.

We ended up trading with some other guys and getting a ride home a little bit earlier. :)

Our jolly crew of at least party somewhat hungover internationals!

(L-R): Inès, Ale, Lena, Salva, Pauline, Joel, Anna, David, Aldmar, Galen, Sunwoo, me, Anne-Lise, Danielle, Eyvonne.

(Thanks Nicolo for the photo!)

I can't wait for our next trip! Fall break in two weeks will be spent in Chicago, Halloween in New Orleans, Thanksgiving in San Francisco... I am going to be 100% broke. But it's definitely worth it.

Florida pt. 2

I was meaning to write this post shortly after arriving at Hendrix College. I was going to find a quiet corner in the Burrow, the nice lobby of one of the buildings here, meant for hanging out and doing homework. Or I was gonna sit on my bed one evening since my roommate hadn't yet arrived, and just get it over with. But nope. It's been almost a month since we arrived, and I honestly have not had the time. The little free time I've had has been dedicated to quick naps, hanging out, exploring, eating, or getting ahead with homework.

But I feel like it's time, I need to post about the second leg of our Florida trip so that I can start posting about what's been going on.

To be honest, I kind of fell in love with Fort Lauderdale. It was tropical and warm and touristy, but you could find nice quiet streets to walk on and the beach wasn't too full. It went so comfortable and welcoming! I kind of feared going to Miami, especially since our hostel was located directly on Miami Beach, just images of thousands of tourists surrounding us. And that's kind of what happened.

View of Miami from aboard a cruise ship.

But it wasn't that bad! After the initial shock of leaving our hostel at 3PM and being blasted in the face with "EVERYONE OVER 21...... SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS!" we kind of got over it. Seeing as we were tourists ourselves, we decided to go all out and bought Go! Miami cards for $150, which actually turned out to be quite a good investment! The card included entries to tons of museums, different types of tours (on land and sea), entries to amusements parks, zoos, and discounts. I think in the end we saved about $100 in total and got to see a lot of Florida ;)

 

Left: Miami Beach, standing in front of our hostel.

Right: The diner featured in Will Smith's music video ;)

On our first full day in Miami, we decided to hop on the tourist bus, thinking that would be our best and cheapest way to get around town that day. We ended up hopping off at a place called Jungle Island, which was basically just a zoo. But I got to chill with some tiny little monkeys running around "free", as in we actually joined them in their cage. I <3 monkeys. We also took a short boat cruise that promised to show us the bay, but did not mention that the point was to gawk at celeb houses. Oh well. I now know what my life goals are. Our last stop was Little Havanna, where we had some extremely good but insanely filling Cuban food, and walked for what seemed like a thousand miles before we actually found a cab to take us back to Miami Beach.

1st row: I love flamingos. Mainly because they're pink, like the cockatoo in the left pic who loved getting scratched.

2nd row: The little tiny monkey I hung out with! Also not sure whether that sign is meant to make me feel somehow safe...

3rd row: The coolest sign in Little Havana. Also some awesome food. I only managed to eat two of my fried chicken things.

Some celeb's home on Star Island. Cool, huh?

On our third day we got up super early and hopped on a bus that took us on a 5 hour long ride down to Key West for the day! 

Seven Mile Bridge. I think. Well one of the many bridges on the way to the Keys.

In Key West we got on another hop-on-hop-off tram tour that took us around the island, stopping off at random locations, including Hemingway's house. I think we did what any English student would do: viewed the house from the outside, snapped a picture, and left. I would have felt like a failure an English student had we not seen it, but the student part of me kicked in and refused to pay the $15 entry or whatever to get in and stare at the same walls some old dude used to stare at. Eh.

Hemingway's favorite bar, which to be honest was the worst experience of our trip in terms of service, food, drinks and atmosphere. Is that their "thing"?

All those people paid to go see Hemingway's house. I wish I could have seen the cats though.

I think this sign perfectly conveys the laid back mentality of Key West.

Left: I want to live on a street as colorful as this.

Right: This bar was located where Sloppy Joe's originally stood. 100 x better than the actual "Sloppy Joe's". Yes those are bras. No mine is not there.

How could you not love this place?

On our last day in Miami we decided to take it easy. We rented bikes (also included in our Go! Miami) cards, rode around town, went shopping, had good food, went to the beach... chilled. My only regret is that I wish I would have recognized more places from Dexter and CSI: Miami. Oh well, next time!

This time I will leave you with two photos of Joel looking extremely happy about his food. Maybe his company too.. Who knows.

Florida pt. 1

Somewhere above Fort Lauderdale.

Currently sitting in the sweet ass lounge of our hostel in Miami Beach with a nice view of Ocean Drive opening out in front of us. I'll save that 'till next time though.... :D The first part of our Florida trip is now over, after two full days in Fort Lauderdale.

Ft. Lauderdale Beach Boulevard, which is where our hotel was.

We stayed at a cheap hotel called Avalon Waterfront Inns, which I can definitely recommend to anyone traveling in Florida on a budget. The location was perfect, nestled between Hiltons and Westins and the Ritz, a tiny little turquoise house right on the beach. We only paid $200 for three nights for two people for our own room. Maybe not a 5 star experience, but we knew that going in. The staff was excellent, so helpful and nice. They had great recommendations for getting around and where to eat :)

The corridor of our hotel, our room was at the very end. 

You can kind of almost see the ocean peaking out form in between the palm trees.

American food.... No doubt something I've been excited about, but at the same time a little worried about spending 5 months in the land of deep fried everything. Am I completely deceiving myself by saying that I'll try and eat healthy at college? And that I can splurge on whatever I want while on vacation? Probably. I'd checked out a bunch of restaurants to try out online ahead of time, which is how on our second day we ended up walking an hour in scorching heat for breakfast at the Floridian, which happens to be Rachael Ray's favorite 24-hour diner. We wised up in the evening and took a cab to Rocco's Tacos across the street from the Floridian. I like to think that I make good guacamole, but the guacamole they prepared right in front of our eyes showed me that I still have miles to go... Maybe one day! Our first breakfast, however, was at the Deck, just down the road from our hotel, recommended by the front desk. :)

Breakfast at the Deck, breakfast at the Floridian, guacamole at Rocco's Tacos.

The Floridian, how cute?!

On our first full day in Fort Lauderdale we caught a shuttle from our hotel to Sawgrass Mills Mall, the 7th largest mall in the States ;) I'm pretty proud that even after five and a half hours of walking around I only bought a pair of Nikes and a hat on top of the essentials I didn't bring with me from Finland (hair straighteners, shampoo, towel, etc.)

My super cute ice cream colored Nikes. You'll catch a glimpse of the hat later!

A good deal of the second day was spent walking to Las Olas for breakfast, after which we got the Sun Trolley back and went to the beach. There was an amazing thunder storm the night before, and they were predicting another one yesterday afternoon which is why we just wanted to stop by for a quick dip. There was actually no storm though, and we ended up spending a couple of hours swimming in water that you could almost call hot, and lying on the beach reading. I ended up burning my shoulders and nose. Not a very good look... Thank god for aloe vera.

1st row: Las Olas boulevard and an abundance of American flags, and some of the nice boats and houses we saw while walking down.
2nd row: How I spent a good deal of time on the beach (finally almost finished with 1Q84!), and sea turtle nesting areas on the beach. 
3rd row: Beach, and more beach, and some Joel.
4th row: The worst ideas of our lives. Mega cocktails, I was SO FULL after one of those, like I wanted to never eat again.

Now back to the beach!