Taste of chicago

Taste of Chicago is a free festival that takes place is Grant Park, it's one of the biggest park of the city. Basically, there is food everywhere, drinks loads of people and gigs.
We spent a couple of hours there, walking around. i was amazed by the number of people, and a bit worried cause i had my camera with me and didn't want to get robbed. Obviously nothing as such happened.

We saw a few songs played by Steve Miller Band, luckily enough they played their most famous song when we were there.





It was so hot there, mid-afternoon in chicago, i swear it's just like Marrakesh at midday, and apparently it even get worse at the end of July!


We didn't really do much, we went for a glass of wine, and that's it, everything was ridiculously expensive. It was 4.50$ for a very tiny tiny glass of wine!

Anyway, it was fun to see so many people in the streets! but i guess tonight (4th of July - Independance Day) will even be more impressive!

During the night, we went to very cheap bar, which looked pretty dodgy! All 3 of us are living on the cheap so we were trying to find an affordable place. and we did!!
with free pool, free cheese balls, a Jukebox and cheap drinks.
It was fun i gotta say! There was a bachelor party there, tbh i hope if one day i get married, that my husband will never end up in such a place for his bachelor party, he looked so bored, we had pity of him so decided to get him 3 shots of whiskey, hopefully he felt less bored after those!

Here is a pic of my two roommates: David (left) and Shane (right)

Chicago, loving it more and more everyday

Over the past few days, i have been looking for a flat that i have finally found,
It's by Logan square, a walking distance from my newsroom which is great!
It's in the basement of a 2 story house,
I'm living with Irish guys. The house has just been refurbished so everything is new!

On tuesday i finally went to the Loop, which is the center of Chicago, it's beautiful!
I didn't think i would like the big buildings and everything but i actually loved it.
I went for lunch with some French people i'm in touch with. It was nice to meet some people from France, but i gotta say, they are still very attached to france, and were talking a lot about french tv shows etc. and as i don't watch french tv at all, i felt that belong somewhere else. But it was still nice to meet them!





We went to Millenium park, which is a beautiful park in the middle of the city.
There is what they call the Bean, it's an architectural piece of art, that has the shape of bean. you can see yourself in it in different shapes, either small and big, or tall and skinny. You also have a great and distorted view of the city. it's very well done



Next to it, there was a tower fountain, with a screen that displayed faces with different facial expressions.
There was loads of people enjoying the water, mainly children. they were very cute playing into the water and running after each other





i had a look around the streets, it's so different from what i'm used too, but in a good way.
Everything is bigger and huge. While walking around the streets I was wondering what type of people could such a big ego to create such big buildings!
I gotta say that the streets are clean, people are very very nice, always very helpful.












On thursday, we were invited to a jazz club to see a blues band playing, it was totally awesome! They are called Deep Blue, they are number 1 in Blue cd section or something like that. They played loads of songs and one of the guitarists was really impressive, his fingers was going so fast on the guitar, that was insane.
We were with Lester again, the guy we met in the club we went to on tuesday. He introduced us again to the musicians and the singer!
The bassist and the singer are apparently pretty famous, they went on tour all around Europe. I'm not really surprised cause it was easy to notice their talent!
I don't know much about the history of the bar his time, but i guess it's a pretty well-known one.

Anyway, i had very good night,
I can't wait to see them playing again!




Sorry the layout for this post is bit shit... I'm looking for a better website!

A night at Green Mill

Green Mill is a very old Jazz bar, we didn't actually know what to expect when we arrived,
we barely knew where it was, but luckily we found it.
Green Mill is one of those clubs that haven't changed for years, to be more precise it hasn't changed since the prohibition.
We were told that Al Capone used to go there quite often, which made the place even more symbolical!

The band, Deep Blue, was made of 3 musicians, they were playing jazz during the first part and then more jazzy music.
I brought my DSLR, and as usual it caught people's attention.
First, we were sitting on the left hand side of the room, with a nice angle but a bit far to take great shots.
For some reasons, the guy who was working for the band told us that we could have the best sit, right in front of the scene!
This guy, Lobster, started to talk to us, and he invited us to a blues show on Thursday, and if we give him a ring we will get in as VIP. I'm not entirely sure of what that means, but STILL!!! first night chicago and people can see that i'm a VIP!!!!!
He told us the history of the bar, with al capone, the fact that they are very selective about who plays in that place etc.
Anyway, he introduced us to the band, who then carried on playing after the break.
The music was very nice, and you could feel that they weren't only playing it, they
were living it, they savoring every single notes they were playing and loving it!

The pianist (he wasn't a pianist cause the instrument he was playing kinda looked like the piano but wasn't...) was blind, according to Lobster only a very few very talented people could play this instrument. He had less expression on his face than the others, but it was easy to guess that he was totally into it.
The guitarist, (well i think that was a guitar) talked to us during both break, he saw us taking pics and would like us to send them to him.
I had a very good night, it was amazing how easy it is to talk to people you don't know, you get invited to events by people you've never seen before.
Rachel and I are both up to go to that event on Thursday! I believe it's gonna be a big thing, and even if it's not, at least we would have been VIP for one night in Chicago!

First day in Chicago

This is my first post of my blog that i might not keep up-to-date, depends on how much spare time i have got.
July 2010 inaugurates the beginning of a my year that I'll spend traveling.
I know i'm not good at sending emails to keep in touch especially when abroad, where there is always some many things to do and see! So whoever wants to follow me, here you are, you now can become my stalker!

First Destination: Chicago,
Aim: Internship at In These Times (magazine)

To be honest, when a few months before i left and even now, i was excited but pretty sure that i wasn't gonna fall in love with the city and i was kinda skeptical about it
I don't usually like huge cities such as Paris, London and maybe Chicago.
So I was looking forward to it, but was trying to have great expectations about it, as i didn't want to be disappointed.
I'll make the most of it and I'm sure like everyone i know who went there I'm gonna love it!

The journey to get there went well, I even fell asleep before the aircraft took off (had a very rough week end) from London. Rachel (the girl i'm staying with and who is interning at In These Times as well) came and picked me up from the Jackson CTA station.

A few things i'm really proud of: I did wake up on time to catch my train to go to london,
I didn't lose my passport nor my suitcases or my boarding pass or my train tickets, and i didn't miss any planes!
I didn't get lost in the tube (well, CTA here)
Yeah I'm all grown up now!

Rachel took me to a gay bar in her area, to have a 1$ burger and a pint of beer.
I got really shocked when I lit my fag on the terrace and the doorman asked me to go outside, well, he meant behind the barriers that distinguished the bar from the street...
Then Rachel told me that in Chicago you couldn't smoke in public areas, such as a bar, but it was fine on the street... I don't get it, well I guess that's an American thing!
Let's hope that nobody gonna think it's a great idea in Europe!
I went to bed at like 11pm local time, which means about 6 am in france (5am in Enland) whereas i got up at 4.30 on the same day, i hadn't slept for 26 hours!

this morning i woke up by 9.00 am, and i looked for flat during most of the morning, viewed one around the corner from where i stay, which was really nice, hopefully i ll get it.
Then i went for a walk by the lake, everything was beautiful and completely different from what i had seen so far, sand, beautiful blue lake, grass everywhere, there was even a beach for dogs... once again I didn't even try to get it!

After a couple of hours I went back to Rachels to carry on looking for flats... not that exciting.
I'm in contact with a few french people, i shall meet them this week or during the week end, we should go out for lunch and probably a few drinks!

Tonight I'm going to a gig with Rachel of organ-jazz gospel but before we gonna get some Thai food.