Moments Of Endearment: USA Trip - Part 4: Windy City

Day 12
We arrived super duper early in the morning and Ivy & Lawrence picked us up from the airport! It's so nice to finally meet them, and even better when today onward, we don't need to worry about transportation because now we have personal cars! Hahahaha But we are back to our daily planning of where to visit and what to do.

We headed straight to their family home to temporary park our luggage and to meet up with another two friends - Karen and Donna!! We shoo-ed them awake and stole their bed to have a rest. LOL After waking up, finally we are energetic to feel excited and happy to have a group of great friends together finally! We freshen up (which took almost 2 hours with so many pax) and headed off to our first yummy mexican food!

Look at the size of our food!

After a hearty and yummy brunch, we headed back to grab our luggage and headed to our pre-booked accommodation that will be our home for the next 7 days! We had a big apartment as there would be 9 of us staying together.

Living Room

Living room & Dining Area with Wifi TV!

Fully equipped kitchen

Hallway to our rooms

Master bedroom

Bathroom 1 attached to master bedroom

Bedroom 2

Bathroom 2

Direct access to rooftop!

BBQ area at rooftop

With 9 of us, we still need air mattresses so that all of us are able to sleep comfortably for the next 7 days! But, we felt luxurious to have a place called home for a week!

Our itinerary for the day is a cruise ride in Navy Pier to celebrate the bachelorette for bride-to-be, Ivy! We've pre-booked our ride with Mystic Blue for the Sunset Cruise which includes a buffet dinner from 7pm to 9.30pm.

Our ride for the night

View from the pier

We almost had a heart attack because the bride-to-be was nowhere to be found at 6.30pm boarding time. She went over to fetch her dad from the airport and was stuck in a very bad traffic. At first, we were quite relaxed as we arrived early, and even managed to take selfies.

As the clock ticked by, we were getting more and more anxious. We even planned on how should we tricked the cruise staff to extend the boarding time : Option 1: Begging that we come here all the way from Malaysia, etc etc... Option 2: Someone flirt with the staff to get time extension! HAHAHA We even had half the group to go up the cruise to stop the ship for departing! LOL #DedicatedBridesmaids

Thank God Ivy arrived 5 minutes before the ship depart from the pier! We rushed her to the washroom to change, and some of us changed from our slippers/sport shoes to our high heels, so all of us managed to board the ship just in time before they close the doors and pull the ship away from the pier.

Sunset just right when we depart

Our table for the night

Finally we were able to all relax and began our night with the free champagne given by the staff. Thanks!

Team Bride

As we had our dinner, the view was spectacular. The skylines of Chicago against the colourful background of sunset view.

View from our window

After our dinner, we even went up to the upper deck which has an outdoor balcony for us to chill. I said chill because it was really chilly! We were freezing but still decided to numb our bodies with the super cold wind to enjoy the night view of Chicago. It was all worth it!!!

Glad we decided to experience this! And Happy Bachelorette Ivy!! :)

Day 13

After running some wedding errands for the first half of the day, we headed off to tick off the touristy things in Chicago. The first stop was Millennium Park.

I was already mesmerized by the skyscrapers along the road.

In Millennium Park also housed the world's most famous bean - Cloud Gate!

Love the bean from the other side as well as we were able to capture the skylines INSIDE the bean.

Of course we had fun taking many mirror image with the bean.

Then, we walked towards Millenium Monument and spotted random sculptures along the way. Those sculptors were weirdly pretty I would say.

As we walked along, the skyscrapers still mesmerized me. LOL

We passed by the Millennium Monument and now that I look back at the photo, I have no idea why we decided to pose like statues. We looked ridiculous! Hahahaha Anyway, that's the perk of being tourists, no one knew us!

We walked towards the Crown Fountain, and find it amusing as the fountain shows random people's faces.

And the highlight is there would be water spitting from their mouth. So we waited for quite some time for our photo moment!

Next is Buckingham Fountain.

As we walked, the sky was getting darker and then suddenly when we realised, it's Chicago nighttime! Which means we are surrounded by beautiful city lights.

Everyone says one dish when it comes to Chicago - Deep Dish Pizza! So we started to head towards the nearest Giordano's. We were also super hungry at that time! So we headed towards the Magnificent Mile while hunting for the nearest Giordano's. In between, we passed by a river, and again I was in love with the city lights!

Can you spot Trump Building?

Nice design - The Wrigley Building

Radio Broadcast Station Live!

Sad to say, there was a super long queue (Almost two hours wait!!!), so headed further north to the next Giordano's. We walked for another 30 minutes before we reached the next Giordano's. There was a queue but we were exhausted by that time, and decided to order and wait.

Lawrence so kind to help us to wait in queue while the rest of us continue to go to the Water Tower and around to do our touristy thingy - being taking photos.

Then we spotted Hershey's Chocolate shop!!

Being a chocolate over, I wish to own all the GIANT-SIZED chocolates!

Kisses as big as my face!

Reese's lip balms? ME WANT! But my pocket don't want!

If only this is ALL mine!

Finally after about 1 hour later, we finally have our seats in Giordano's.

The deep dish pizza was sooooooooooooooooooo GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!! Totally worth the long wait and totally worth it to gain some weights because of it!

After a super satisfied meal, we headed to the last stop for the day - Chicago Theatre! Just a picture with the sign though, not watching any broadway or musical.

Day 14

Today was all about wedding rehearsals and last minute wedding preparations!

And also a fun day in the apartment living room where we had a 3 hours dancing crash-course by the Groom to prepare our lousy Asian feet for the wedding the next day. By the end of the 3 hours, we hoped we learned enough to cheat our way through the next day!

Ended our day with yummy ramen meal from Oiistar!

One of the many many yummy ramen we shared. Still thinking about it!

Day 15

Wedding day! Everyone woke up super early to prepare for the day. And we were so grateful to be part of their beautiful western wedding in Winnetka Community House! Congratulations again Ivy and Lawrence!! =)

Garden Ceremony

Photoshoot

Dinner

Inside the changing room after the wedding dinner ended

Toilet selfie from Team Asia!

Day 16

It's skydiving day! We've booked our skydiving with Midwest Skydiving, so after brunch we drove an hour out from Chicago to Wisconsin. We dropped off our friends who were not skydiving at Pleasant Prairie Premium Outlet for their shopping session. We registered ourselves once we reached and listened to the briefing. Some of us even ate the pill to prevent motion sickness! We were so ready for it!

Then to our horror, although it was sunny, there's lots of clouds thus we were not allowed to jump through the clouds for safety issues. We have to wait for the clouds to clear, so with nothing to do but wait and kill time, we took lots of photos with the nature.

The supposedly Skydiving Team for the day!

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What a view~

Drama queens

Jumpshot!

We waited for three hours (until the time for the last plane to depart), before we accepted our fate and took a rain-check for the activity. We were kind of disappointed but no choice. Safety comes first! We headed back to meet up with our friends in Pleasant Prairie Premium Outlet and spend the rest of the time shopping until the shop closes!

Day 17

Last day for sight-seeing in Chicago, of course we have to visit the Skydeck at Willis Tower.