Monday 25th October - Calgary - Chicago

A different set of people at breakfast this morning to see us off - a 'posh' South African duo who'd lived all over the world. We took a taxi to the airport for convenience and waited in line. As we passed through US immigration we were told the news we were hoping we wouldn't hear - that they wouldn't restamp our passports with a new 90 day stay. We argued our case and even were taken to see a miserable-faced behind-a-desk official but the answer was still the same - 'you gotta leave by December 27'. We were very cheesed off as we boarded the plane and waved goodbye to the by now melting snow of Canada. 3 hours later and it was hello to the US for the '2nd time' on our trip. The man behind the information desk was too busy reading his newspaper to say hello to us whilst the customs man at the airport was more sympathetic to us and gave us a contact address to check out in the morning. We plumped for a hotel near the airport for economic reasons but then waited nearly an hour for the courtesy bus to show. The hotel itself is a bit of a mini-city in it's own right whilst, as we've now become used to, the room was big enough to park a car in the spare space.

Tuesday 26th October - Chicago

Up at 4.45am to catch the shuttle bus back to the airport (the busiest in the world - fact!) where we ended up queueing at the Hilton check-in desk just to get some change for the subway ticket machine as the machine we wanted to used was broken. An hour later we were in town queueing with the rest of the nomads with reason to talk to customs. The first 'one' (read that as meaning ignorant, rude customs official) said we 'wouldn't get in without an appointment' but 10 minutes later we were standing in line. It didn't matter as the second 'one' - said 'next please' as we answered 'no' to her 'appointment ?' question - but not before we'd heard the first 'one' tell a mother queueing in line 'can you keep you child quiet?', despite the fact that we hadn't heard anything at all! We left bemused and headed for a walk down towards Michigan Lake to clear our heads - and then we decided we're gonna stay anyway even if the customs people refuse to even speak to us and understand our case (we know the customs people can see our original 6-month visa electronically and we never asked for our passports to be stamped in Dallas). So that thought cheered us up a bit and it was helped further by the warm autumn morning's sunshine. We walked past completely empty moorings for all the city boats and wondered where they'd all gone. Chicago is the original skyscraper city and looked impressive set against the colours of the autumn trees. We bought ourselves some city transit tickets and headed uptown to the Vic music venue to try and get some tickets for Sue's favourite band of the moment - Tears for Fears. Alas, they were sold out and so was Ticketmaster's quota so we have to wait till we go west. This city is very geared up for Halloween and there are pumpkins in nearly everyone's backyard - one even had glow-in-the-dark skeletons and spider's webs attached to the gates!

Wednesday 27th October - Chicago

Late lazy morning after yesterday's early rising. The train journey from the airport to downtown Chicago takes about 40 minutes. First stop was a boat tour of Chicago River and Michigan Lake. Our guide was a hoarse sounding, quick-witted local who didn't think much of Chicago's sports teams! As we chugged up the river we could see the huge buildings of various guises that make up the Chicago skyline. Sears Tower was indeed huge (3rd in the world currently) and we couldn't see the top for the clouds. Even without being architectural gurus of any kind, we could apprectiate the great effort and impressive lines that make up the city centre. We passed the building where the Jerry Springer show is filmed on the tour so we headed there after the trip. We were slightly too late for the phone hotline for today. Instead we headed to a place called 'Hot Tix' that sells half price theatre tickets. We settled for a local production called 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change' and headed accross town on the CTA (local transport) to see it, stopping off on the way in an Afghan restaurant. The show was very good (especially the first half) and a mix of comedy and song about love, romance, sex and marriage. We did feel a bit under-dressed tonight as plenty of other people seemed to have donned their glad rags!

Thursday 28th October - Chicago

Our efforts to secure tickets for both Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer shows proved fruitless with 3 months and 2 weeks waiting lists respectively. One thing we've noticed both here and in Canada is that all the doors tend of open the opposite way to at home - they push 'out' onto the street. We paid a visit to the Millenium Park - Chicago's newest attraction only completed this summer - it included a spiral aluminium bridge, an acoustically designed mesh of pipes originating from a concert stage and a kidney-shaped mirror with great reflections of the city skyline. We'd spotted an ad in a local listings mag for a Police/U2 tribute concert so we made our way there - it turned out the gig was actually in the Field Museum where there's a dinosaur exhibition going on. We know the Police and U2 have been around a while but it gave a new meaning to the term 'Dinosaurs of Rock'! Among the audience we spotted Liz Taylor and Madam Whiplash (minus the whip). The guy who was Bono was uncannily like him whilst 'the Edge' looked a bit like a younger version of Benny Hill (that man again!). The band members in both bands were the same people - they wore big hats and sunglasses and hoped we wouldn't notice. There was also a Machu Picchu exhibit on at the place so we walked round that between the band's sets. As the gig was over they played some older songs over the sound system - who were they playing but Tears for Fears - the band that Sue would love to see here on Monday but can't get tickets for - needless to she wasn't impressed!

Friday 29th October

After a late night phone call to Sue's parents we didn't get to sleep till 3am - so we weren't back in Chicago city centre until near lunch time. The day was very muggy/balmy for the time of year with temperatures in the mid 20s. The huge library in the city centre was great for us - there were over 130 PCs available - all high speed and best of all there were free! This allowed us to book some accomodation in San Francicso and Sue finally booked some tickets to see Tears for Fears! - we'll get to see them in LA in 3.5 weeks time. We'd heard about Buddy Guy's Blues Legends being a good place to see the blues being played live so we headed there (Buddy Guy is a seminal blues legend for those not musically inclined!). It turned out to be true so we stayed for drinks, then followed them with some dinner, all the while being entertained by the men on stage - it was a blistering good night and it turned out the man himself had turned up to catch the headline act - Nick Moore and the Fliptops