This morning we woke up at 8am, after Sam spent until 12:30am down in the lobby accessing the free internet (YAY FOR FREE WI-FI!!). Getting up and having showers, we then went to the front desk and found out the best way to get downtown was to catch the free shuttle from the hotel to O’Hare International Airport, then catch the Blue Line train/subway to Jackson Station. $2.25 per person will get you anywhere on the train in Chicago on one line, and $0.50 for a transfer. We had to work out how to use the ticket machines but once we did, we were on our way downtown. It takes about 40-50 minutes by train to get downtown – and that was an experience. Seeing Chicago by day was like stepping into Save The Last Dance!

Eventually we got to Jackson Station and we got off the train – along with nearly everyone else because it was a transfer station. Finding our way upstairs, we were on the corner of Jackson Blvd and Dearborne Street. We were only 4 blocks or so from what was Sears Tower, but is now Willis Tower. Finding our way to the Skydeck Entrance, we had our first experience of going through the revolving doors. Yeah, I don’t like those. It’s kind of a race to see if the door can squash you before you get to the other side! Not a fan! But we made it through and were ushered into the lifts to go down, yes, down, to the ticket counter for the Skydeck. Once we paid, we went through the little display on how awesome Chicago was (basketball, baseball, Chicago Blackhawks – now we’re talking! - Oprah, etc) before we got to the lift that goes to the top.

Now, if you’re wondering, Willis Tower is the tallest building in the Western World, and is 103 storeys high. It takes less than a minute to get to the 103rd floor, and to give you an example of how tall this building is, it’s 262 times the height of Michael Jordan! I’m 5’6″ tall, so it’s around 280 x my height. Before I go on to talk about the view, I have to make mention of a sign we saw when we paid for the tickets to go up. On the counter there is a sign that says “NO REFUNDS DUE TO NO VISIBILITY FROM INCUMBENT WEATHER” – yes they tell you if there’s no visibility that day and some people don’t believe them so they buy a ticket up anyway and then get mad when they can’t see anything and want a refund. Can you believe it?! I couldn’t!!

Anyway the view was just spectacular. It just went for miles! We got a TON of photos, which Sam will upload the best later on and edit the post with a few. Once you go around, there’s the glass floor side of the Skydeck, where you step out onto this glass floor and it’s just glass all around you. You kind of feel like you’re in Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator, to be honest! Sam is terrified of heights – it’s one of the reasons he doesn’t like flying, but he went out on it first – at my insistence – and we got some awesome photos. It was interesting watching people’s reactions to the glass floor too because a lot of people who are terrified of heights just refused to get on it, or they were shaking when they stepped out there.

A few kids were doing jumps while their parents photographed them, and one kid did a handstand, while his 3 yr old sister got in there behind him so he looked like he had pink sneakers coming out of his head. It was kind of neat. There were this group of four guys, and three were fine with it but one was just terrified. After about 10 mins of pushing and prodding and finally lifting him up and getting him out there, he finally relaxed enough to pose for a couple of photos, but it was just brilliant the way that his friends wouldn’t let him miss out on the experience just because of his fear. It was great to watch – and they were quite entertaining too!

From there, we then walked from Willis Tower down Jackson Blvd to find something for lunch. We didn’t even have breakfast, so we were hungry. There was this pizza place we passed on the way to Willis Tower, so we stopped in there and had a slice of pepperoni pizza and a small coke each. It was only a total of $8.65! But the slice of pizza was the size of three of ours back home, and it was more than enough. I couldn’t have eaten any more if I tried. It was good, so so good.

Looking at the shops as we passed, I nearly jumped for joy when I found Barnes & Noble, a large bookstore chain here in the US. We went inside and looked around for a book I’ve been looking for for ages – Life’s That Way by Jim Beaver. Jim plays Bobby Singer on Supernatural and his wife Cecily passed away from cancer a year or two ago. The book is a memoir of the emails Jim would send out to his mailing list of family and friends to let them know how the family was doing. It’s had rave reviews, and of course, since Jim will be at the convention on Saturday and our tickets have complimentary autographs for Jim included – so I’m going to get him to sign my copy of his book! I was very, very happy to find it!

From there, we walked down Jackson Blvd all the way down to the Chicago Institute of Art, and then past that to the park on Lake Shore Drive. There were squirrels everywhere. And they were fast little buggers too! They were grey, unlike the black or brown ones in Canada. But they were everywhere. As we walked through the park, with the barren trees and the yellow and orange trees all over the ground, it was just beautiful. we walked the 10 blocks (felt like it anyway!) to the Museum Campus and headed to where Sam wanted to go the most on this leg of the trip: The Field Museum!

No doubt he’ll edit this post to put in a touch of Dresden Fandom (I’ll let him explain that), but it was 2.15pm by the time we made it to the Field Museum, so we were thankful it was Free Admission Day! We saw SUE the T-Rex, which is a female T-Rex that was discovered (skeleton complete) in South Dakota. Then we went into the Americas exhibit, the Ancient Egyptians exhibit and then the gift shop. We didn’t spent more than an hour and a half there, because we had to walk back to the blue line station before it got dark so we could catch our train back to the hotel.

Edit by Sam: Yes indeed, I will be adding a few things here. The Field Museum is mentioned a few times in the Harry Dresden novels, but the main one fans of the books will remember is book 7 “Dead beat”, where Harry brings Sue the T-Rex to life and rides her to take on a group of Zombies. My description isn’t really all that good, but the book is killer, and seeing Sue in person was outstanding! The Dresden Chronicles is to me what Supernatural is to Wendy. The books are set in Chicago, so naturally, there are a lot of locations around the city that are mentioned in the novels, including the Shedd Aquarium, which we will be visiting on Monday.

We walked back downtown and were looking for a place that sold DVDs, but didn’t find one. We did manage to find a store that sold t-shirts and hats of all the sporting teams of Chicago, inluding the Blackhawks. They had a special on so we got 2 Blackhawks t-shirts for $27. Not bad!

Then we caught the train home and the shuttle back to the hotel. We walked down to the Pine Grove Family Restaurant for dinner again, and now we’re in the lobby using the free wi-fi and watching all the other fans of Supernatural check in for the convention. It’s eye-opening! Pre-registration for Gold tickets (us) starts at 8pm and people are already lining up. Supernatural airs at 8pm so we’re watching it now.

ETA: We watched Supernatural in Maxie’s Bar & Grill, where they put the show up on all the televisions except one right on the bar. It was kind of awesome to watch it in a room full of fan girls! And a guy or two (not including Sam, who we all know is here for Jared! P) Sam realised when we were watching the show that the Impala we saw in Vancouver was THE Impala! He recognised the license plate! So not only did I miss it… I MISSED THE REAL ONE! I did see the tail-lights and heard the rumble so it’s okay! Once the episode was over, I suggested we go straight to registration and get our stuff sorted for the weekend. We picked up our tickets, our lanyons, our gifts (Supernatural Shot Glasses! YAY! More to add to our collection!), and of course my photo op tickets. The schedule looks jammed, but it shouldn’t be too bad. We’re in row 9, so our wait for autographs and photo ops shouldnt’ be too long at all. And there should be enough time between the Jensen & Jared Duo photo op and the J&J QNA for us to duck out and get some lunch. We were trying to think of what we could get the actors to sign because we have 7 autograph tickets each:

Tracie Dunwoodie – played Pamela Barnes in Season 4 (autograph is on Friday)
Aldis Hodge – played Jake Talley in Season 2 (autograph is Saturday)
Jake Able – played Adam Milligan, Sam and Dean’s half brother, in Season 4 (autograph is Saturday)
Misha Collins – plays the angel, Castiel in Season 4 and 5, and Jimmy Novak, Castiel’s “meat suit” in Season 4 (autograph is Saturday)
Jim Beaver – plays Bobby Singer in all Seasons and is a recurring character (autograph is Saturday)
Jensen Ackles – plays Dean Winchester (autograph is Sunday)
Jared Padalecki – plays Sam Winchester (autograph is Sunday)

What we’ve decided to do is get everyone to sign a white t-shirt that I’ve purchased, and with the second autograph ticket, get everyone to sign the back of one of our GOLD TICKET VIP PASS so that I can get it framed along with the t-shirt! All except Jim. Jim I’ll ask him to sign the t-shirt and also to sign his book for me, like I said above. I looked at the prices of everything and we decided not to buy any other merchandise. The photos for autographs were ranging from $6-$20, and the t-shirts were $5-$25 each but there weren’t any of just Dean that I liked. I decided that I’d skip the merchandise in favour of the autographed t-shirt which I can treasure forever, and get framed when we get home along with the autographed ticket.

Anyway after registration, we came out to find a line of fangirls waiting for registration that went all the way from the ballroom back to the lobby! Sam said to me that I was a genius for doing registration when we did because there was no one there and if he had to wait in line with all those people he would have killed me! I told him to suck it up and admit I rock. Which he then did. We did, however, bump into Sue in line and stopped to say hello! We were happy to see she had landed here safe and sound.

Now we’re in the lobby using the WI-FI again and listening to the chatter of fangirls around us. It’s pretty phenomenal watching the amount of stuff people are purchasing. I mean someone walked away with like 20 pictures, all in plastic sleeves which are an extra $3 on top. Just amazing.

We were hoping to catch the Stars game on the net, but it looks like that’s a no-go. But that’s okay. There’s plenty of other things to do and if nothing else, Yahoo can give us a score update! Day 10 is done. Bring on the Con!

Today started only 2 or so hours after the last one ended.  After spending til 1:30am packing and getting ready for an early start today, we were rudely awoken by our alarm at 4am to get down to the Greyhound station by 5:30am to catch our bus.

A note to anybody thinking of doing this… don’t!  2hrs sleep is not really conducive to an active mind, and we’re pretty sure when that 4am alarm went off, only a fraction of our brain cells actually woke up. Not only that, Wendy ended up throwing up due to exhaustion before we even left the hotel! She’s fine though, so no need to anyone to worry!

Vancouver has been the most amazing place to visit, and captured our hearts from the first day sitting in Timmy Ho’s and walking over to Granville Island (see the photos, they’re amazing!) to the last day walking through the rain and going up the Vancouver Lookout.  For those who’ve never been here, we encourage you to find a way to do so.  We don’t want to leave to be perfectly honest, “but love, and a pesky curse defanged me”… oh wait, that’s a quote from Buffy   – Chicago and more of a journey await us so depart we must.

The bus trip was uneventful, and even though we did intend to enjoy the sights that we missed on the bus up to Vancouver (it was night after all), we both ended up pretty much passing out by the time the bus hit its first stop in Coquitlam and slept for about an hour, waking up just before we arrived at the US Customs office on the border of Canada and the United States.

We had been told horror stories about the US Customs people on the border, especially those on the buses.  I don’t know if it’s our amazing personalities, or the fact that we already had Visas, but the Customs officer was incredibly cheerful, even joking with us.  We literally took less than 2 minutes to clear customs and get back on the bus.

The rest of the trip was a blur or sleep-wake-sleep-wake, and we don’t really remember all that much.  We did get some photos as we passed through Seattle, and will be uploading them as soon as we can.

We were sitting in SEA/TAC (that’s Seattle Tacoma International Airport for the uninitiated) drinking “Seattle’s Best Coffee” and eating a Turkey Croissant when we decided to see if there was some free wi-fi.  Rod, if you’re reading this, you’re right, Seattle’s best make some damn good coffee! Though the Hazelnut Coffee is… unusual. Very… woody in taste.  Back to the wi-fi… there was none that was free, but for $8 we could have 24 hours access. Since we’re not going to be here for more than 3 hours, we didn’t think it was worth it. So instead, we found our gate, curled up with a book and our Ipods and settled back to rest up for the trip east to Chicago.

The flight to Chicago seemed to go on much longer than it should have, most probably due to us being so tired.  Wendy spent much of the flight catching up on sleep but managed to get some amazing photos out of the plane window as we flew over the western part of Washington State. I don’t sleep well on planes, so read a book and watched a movie on the ipod.  It was night when we approached Chicago, so we got a good look at the true size of the city from 15,000 feet in the air… and wow, when they say this is a big city, they’re not kidding!  It just goes on, and on, and on, and on!  We finally landed at Chicago Midway Airport and after chatting with a Chicago police officer for some time (great guy) and getting our bags, we headed over to see about catching the shuttle that runs from Chicago Midway to Chicago O’Hare Airports.  It turned out that we missed it though, so had to catch a taxi instead.  40 minutes and $70 (fare + tip) later we arrived at the Wyndham O’Hare Hotel, tired, hungry and pretty much over being on a bus, plane or in a car!

Being a hotel, it doesn’t have the luxuries we had at the Vancouver hotel, so our first stop after checking in was the local dinner restaurant down the road where we got an Angus Burger each.  It was either that or Maccas, and we figured the restaurant, while not a bowl of veges, was the healthier option.

Upon returning to our hotel, we grabbed the laptop and headed down to the lobby where they offer free wireless internet and did our daily email catch-ups.  That done, we’re now off for a hot shower and some much needed sleep!