Day 5: Vegas

After a good night sleep we headed to the airport to pick up our rent a car. Coupled with a second hand GPS that we recently obtained from Amazon, we were invincible. No place was unreachable any more.

We started our casino tour on the beginning of the strip, in Luxor and Excalibur. We had lunch with Kim in the Venetian and we were ready to gamble! Contrary to the gossips that I put Yure’s salary on the red, I was purely gambling with my own money! :) I quickly lost 60 bucks at the blackjack tables and accompanied Yure to the slot machines to give her support in the confusing world of fruits and stars and bonuses. No need to say, after an initial successful cash out of 2 dollars (beginner’s luck! :) ), she slowly but steadily lost. It was time to leave Vegas, but just before leaving we had to see the wedding chapels.

We drove down till the little white wedding chapel, which is possibly the most famous of them all. Some years ago it has been enabled to facilitate drive-thru weddings for the handicapped and for the ones who are way too drunk to get their ass out of the car to say their oaths. A wedding here costs around 150 dollars at minimum, and takes an average of 8 minutes. According to Jerry, a guy who works there, the busiest day was the 7th July, 2007. That day only they carried out 800 weddings. Jerry never got married himself. He says he doesn’t take work home.

Leaving Vegas behind it was time to hit the road and conquer the 270 miles of mostly straight asphalt stretch between Vegas and Los Angeles. We arrived around 8 in the evening, took a short trip to Hollywood Boulevard and headed back to our place to prepare for the next day.

Day 4: Goodbye Chicago, hello Las Vegas!

In our last morning in Chicago, we hit the road to get to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. After that we took a bus to reach the beach, get a last glimpse of the fabulous skyline and eat a Chicago style beef sandwich.

Goodbye Chicago, we rushed back to the airport to get on a flight to Vegas. We only had one night there.Our friend Kim received us warmly and so did the city. At last nice temperatures! We drove straight to Las Vegas Boulevard. We took some pictures at the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign, enjoyed the fountains at the Bellagio and had some dinner at the Cheesecake factory. Unfortunately, Penny had the day off and she works at a restaurant in Pasadena anyway.

After dinner, we went to Kim’s place to have some sleep. Last time when we visited her with Paul, she had some scorpion issues in her home, luckily this time there were none, so we could enjoy a worry-free night.

Day 3: Chicago in 24 hours

Day three arrived with a beautiful sunny morning. The weather had turned in Chicago and we had planned to do a lot during the day.
We started off in the Loop visiting the Chicago river, the Chicago theater and the famous bean.

After that we headed over to Museum Campus and took a bite of the Chicago style hot dog. Warning! Ketchup is strictly prohibited on them, at some places you might even have to dance for it.

Back in the city we took a lookout on the 103rd floor of Willis tower, formerly known as Sears tower. With its 442 meters it claimed the title of the tallest building in the US until recently, when the One WTC in New York has been topped out.


On our way to the Navy Pier, it was time to get some shrimps at a Bubba Gump restaurant. This restaurant chain was inspired by the movie Forrest Gump, and is a huge success in the US.

To grab some dessert and yet another magnificent view of the city, we climbed to the Signature Lounge on the 95th floor of the Hancock tower. It’s a well known secret that it’s not worth to pay for the observatory here: you can get a small bite in the lounge and just enjoy the view.

To finish up for the day, we booked 2 tickets for a stand-up comedy show in the Second City. It was a kind of improvisation night and, unexpectedly, we understood most of the jokes:)

Day 2: Arriving to Chicago

Virgin Atlantic flight number VS39 took us over from London to Chicago. The flight was around 8.5 hours long, but the in-flight entertainment system should have had kept us occupied. Should have, but this one was seriously from the 1980s. The ones who were lucky enough to have their systems failing permanently, got a portable DVD player. A bit before landing, the captain announced 11ºC/ 56ºF local temperature and we didn’t want to believe our ears. We were not prepared for such a bad weather, all our warm clothes were in Germany, where they belonged :P

After a short train ride from the airport, we met our couchsurfing hosts: Tony, Stephanie and their dog Hitch. They were in the middle of some garden grilling, although it was way too cold to stay outside.

In the evening we took a Metra train to downtown to enjoy the city a little bit, even though our jetlagged brains clocked way past midnight. Being Sunday, the city was absolutely empty and almost no pedestrians could be seen.

Looking for refuge we headed to sample Chicago’s most famous dish, the deep dish pizza, at Lou Manati’s. This is the place recommended by everyone. They don’t have many kinds of toppings, but it is worth a try.

Next day we had to see the best of Chicago, so we headed home and fell to bed.

Day 1 - Barcelona: Roser and Arnau’s wedding

On the first day we have been invited to the wedding of Roser and Arnau. The wedding was in a rural residence near Barcelona. We loved the simple “hipster” style of the wedding. The ceremony was not the usual 2 hours long priest preacher, but a short and moving one. Before we noticed, they were already married:) There was no dress-code, everyone wore what was comfortable, which came in handy, because the sun was shining bright at the newly weds and the gathering.

It was not only a wedding, but also a reunion of erasmus students. Yurena, Roser, Mille, Humberto, Carmina and Valdis were studying together some 8 years ago in Lübeck, Germany. Some of them haven’t met ever since, yet they picked up teasing each other where they left off.

The menu was also not the usual wedding menu you are used to. After some appetizers, the guests were invited to taste two gigantic paellas, yummie!

Roser and Arnau are also great travellers. As a honeymoon they are planning to do a 3 month trip around the US, Thailand, New Zealand and Australia. You can follow their blog here:
http://www.sempreviaggiando.com/

 

From our little trip we wish them lots of happiness, success and never ending adventures! Moltes gràcies amics!

Around the World in 22 days

Once a World traveler, always a World traveler :)
So this year we are to beat the record of Phileas Fogg and circumnavigate the world in a mere 22 days. Of course the trip is not so complete as in the novel or as the one we did with Paul before, but we are aiming to do the following:

• Attend a wedding in Barcelona
• Ride the L trains in Chicago
• Put all on red in Las Vegas
• Drive down the coast in a convertible in LA
• Snorkel at the Fijian coral reefs
• Count the skyscrapers in Hong Kong
• Taste some Portuguese sweets in Macau
• Smell a durian in Singapore
• Arrive back to London safe and sound

This time my travel mate is Yurena, and we are trying to update the blog every day. Kickoff date: June 1st! Follow us here, and leave some comments if you wish!

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in your life?

Some of you might still remember, when we were travelling around the world, whenever we had the time and the camera at hand, we asked the locals two questions:

1. What do you like the most in the place where you live?

2. What's the craziest thing you've done in your life?

Well, the time has come and finally the answers made it into a video compilation. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this video do not represent opinions of simplyaroundtheworld.com. Some of the stories might be purely fictional and provided solely for entertainment purposes:)