Dhammerica – Day Four

Next day, same routine. Big Bro cooks some readymade Alu Paratha. Coffee & breakfast at the neighbourhood Starbucks and we are off to downtown. Our plans are to visit the Navy Pier, supposedly a beautiful place and that well um… is most of the plan. We find the place after quite some trudging and park ourselves at this fantastic table that has a chessboard built into it. The Navy Pier is amongst the most beautiful urban places you can see. There is this really blue stretch of the Lake Michigan and there is what purports to be a tiny beach of sorts, albeit next to the lake. And there is a 10.5 mile circuit for runners, walkers and cyclists – there being hundreds (no kidding!) of the last mentioned species. We just park there and read the day’s edition of the Chicago Tribune and the books we are carrying.

While this is in progress, a stunning lady comes by, puts out what seems like a blanket on the sand, looks around for sometime and just goes off to sleep in the sun. We can’t say that our time was wasted  And then, there are assorted groups just like us who want to nothing much and laze around in the sun.

After a few hours spent thus, we take a walk through the rest of downtown reaching a unnamed sculpture by Picasso which looks somewhat like the Lion King. We then walk around, passing by various famous theatres of Chicago and settle down in a place called ArgoTea – a tea chain. It has free Wifi – Starbucks has paid Wifi by TMObile. So we prefer ArgoTea.

Some confusion ensues when we order the only vegetarian food only to discover some egg in it, despite an assurance by the pretty girl at the counter who professes to be vegetarian herself. When we insist upon just a green salad, she asks us whether we are Vegan. We aren’t but prefer no eggs in our food.
After about an hour of surfing, we are chided by our one of our hosts in the US that we should hardly be spending our time surfing! We take the advice well and head back to big bro’s adda.

Our entire time in downtown is punctuated by about a coffee at Starbucks, once every 2 hours or so. But we are yet to encounter anything that can wake us up.
Once we return for our last night in Chicago, we nod off to sleep at some odd hour in the evening. We need to leave really early for the airport, to take a flight back to Chicago. It is perhaps a vagary of the American economy that the cab which took us from home to the Midway airport cost us as much as the flight from Midway to La Guardia!