SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2008

After a good night of sleep we woke up at around 7am local time (thanks to the jetlag Bernhard and I became early birds).

Not much more than half an hour later we got out of our hotel to start sightseeing, but froze – literally, because of the chill that had overcome Chicago over night. Temperatures were around -25 degrees Celsius and that made it quite difficult to see much of the city. However, we still made it to Sears Tower where one of the fastest elevators on earth took us up to the 103rd floor. The view was stunning: Even though it was limited by clouds and mist we still saw all the major landmarks of the city: Former Meighs Field, John Hancock Center, the channel with its rising bridges, Magnificent Mile, the Loop and so on. After reaching for the sky we decided to go for a bit more of shopping combined with sprawling around the streets. We walked north on Michigan Avenue as far as John Hancock Center, entering a shop every ten minutes to warm up again. The cold was so terrible that we couldn’t even open our eyes when a gust of icy wind hit us.

At around 4pm we decided to go back to our room in Congress Plaza Hotel – this time by bus. The rest of the evening we had a lot of fun playing pool and darts in the hotel lobby. We tried to go for another walk in Millennium Park after sunset, but returned very quickly after taking a few (great) pictures and being forced to seek shelter in a Starbucks, because Bernhard had taken off his gloves while using his camera and so his fingers had almost frozen off.