Today the group started the day off with some nice cereal and bagels, much like every other day.. After the breakfast, we all headed downtown towards Millenial Park to admire Cloud Gate for the first time. Cloud gate is a sculpture of 10 by 20 by 13 m with an exterior of polished stainless steel.

After some delay due to Gert-Jan forgetting his transportation card, we made it there. After walking around in the park for a little while, the group split up. Some people went along the shoreline and headed to Navy Pier, whilst some went into the city centre to shop for a couple of hours.

At 15.00 we all met at the Cloud Gate again to head towards a surprise activity! When the metro stopped at a stop on Goose Island, most people had an idea of what activity it was.. The surprise was a tour and tasting in the Goose Island brewhouse! The group was split into two, one was at 16.00 and one was at 17.00. From the exiting first group, it appeared that the samplers were very generous, especially the girls were having a bit too much fun. When Youri asked: “can we take off our bril?” it was clear that we all had enough to drink.

After the tour, we hung out at the brewhouse a little longer to taste just a couple more beers, after which we headed towards Lou Manati’s for some deep dish pizza. Unfortunately, when we arrived it appeared our reservation was forgotten and we had to opt for take-away. The idea of eating our pizza at the beach with a view of fireworks at the pier sounded very good. But we soon found out why Chicago is also known as the windy city. It felt as if the temperature dropped with about 20 degrees and we all sat next to each other to keep warm. Also, the firework show was at 22.30 instead of 21.00. We headed back to the hostel before the show, since we were all freezing. Most of the group went out in the neighbourhood around the hostel and some people chose to head to bed early.

Xoxo Jantje and Marc