Walk a mile in my underpants

I don’t know what I was thinking booking a 6:50 am flight to Chicago.

Probably “6:50’s not that early.”

But I forgot about the “you have to get to the airport 2 hours early part.” So I was up at 4:00 am.

After sleepwalking through security and ridding myself of anything liquid, I stumbled to McDonalds for breakfast. In my half-asleep stupor, I decided on the McGriddle breakfast sandwich. Not realizing that the McGriddle breakfast sandwich is a bacon, egg and cheese on pancakes. That’s right. Pancakes.

I would’ve been better off eating a stick of butter.

The flight was uneventful. I got to my hotel, the Essex Inn, around 8:30. Luckily, they had a room ready. Not just a room. The pimp-daddy corner suite.

Here’s the view from my hotel room:

(Grant Park, the Field Museum and Lake Michigan)

(The Sears Tower)

Unfortunately, my eyes were too bloodshot to appreciate the view. So I crashed for an hour.

When I woke up, I hit the streets and took some pictures.

It was foggy. Unless that was just my head.

Lunch was at Giordano’s for the obligatory Chicago style deep dish pizza. It was pretty good. Although I think Matthew’s pizza back home makes a better deep dish pie than Giordano’s. (Is that blasphemy? I might’ve just started World War III.)

After lunch, I found Clark Street and followed it all the way to Canada. I walked through Lincoln Park, Lake View, and Wrigleyville until I hit Wrigley Field.

(This is the Sphinx. I never noticed it before, but apparently the Sphinx has boobs.)

(This is me after walking halfway across Chicago on no sleep. If you look closely at the bags under my eyes, you can actually see groceries.)

Outside of Wrigley Field there’s a statue of Hall-of-Fame Cubs broadcaster, Harry Caray:

As you can see, it’s scary as shit.

Is it just me, or does the statue bear stiking resemblence to Bill Murray’s dead boss from Scrooged?

I’m not sure that’s the effect the artist was going for.

Anyway, I did a loop around Wrigley, then cut across to Halstead street and started walking south. Which was interesting. Because my Chicago CityGuide map neglected to mention that this part of the city is called “Boystown.”

Boystown is the horniest neighborhood in Chicago. Possibly the horniest neighborhood in the world. There are literally some blocks in Boystown with four or five sex toys shops. ON ONE BLOCK! How much sex do you have to have keep that many sex shops in business?

(Don’t answer that.)

Perhaps it has something to do with their diet.

After walking back to the El, I jumped on the train and headed back to my hotel. I found a random Thai place around the corner for dinner. So I stopped in and ordered chicken pad thai.

But I didn’t get chicken pad thai.

I got shrimp pad thai.

At least, I thought I did.

But even the receipt says I ate chicken pad thai. Which made me start questioning myself.

That was shrimp, right?

I took that as a pretty good sign that it was time to go to sleep.