US road trip – Chicago

I’ve spent the last period of time in US. After 11 flights, 4 rented cars, sleeping in road side motels(lucky we didn’t get any bed bugs) but also in secluded villas surrounded by exotic gardens or amazing resorts with endless pools in the middle of tropical lush vegetation, eating from the unavoidable fast foods, trying the specific American foods from supermarket or delicious meals prepared by award winning chefs, I’m finally back home and I’m so happy to be here. I started super exited about this trip, ready to apply for a job for “Lonely Planet”(just kidding, especially now :))) and I ended a complete rack on return. On my last 2 flights I was unable to say anything else but: “I just wanna sit in the garden and eat my mother’s fresh and crunchy pie”.

The main purpose for my trip was to visit my newly born nephew and my sister in Chicago. Our car had broken just before deciding to get the visa for US so we were nonstop on the run, but we managed to get it one week and a half before my nephew baptism and to be there on time. During this period I wanted to plan my holiday also, but I realised it was too little time since I didn’t even know were I wanted to spend it.

Once I arrived in Chicago, I had some spare time to think of the options I had. I have to admit it was not an easy task, since none of the places I had in mind didn’t quite fit to what I was expecting. My top choices were: Brazil, South Pacific Islands(Tahiti, Mo’orea, Bora Bora) and the North Pacific Islands of Hawaii. I definitely want to visit them all someday. I thought about Brazil for a long time, it was my favourite destination, but similar to Mexico it’s not a safe place for making a road trip. I’ve read lots of stories about Brazil’s safety of traveling and I’me sure there are safe places to see and that it also depends on luck, but I’ve also heard about people being killed or robbed just when passing out of their hotel in Rio so I wasn’t content about visiting this country with fear that someone will robe us(or worse), at each step, I wanted to enjoy each moment. I still hope things will change in the future and I’ll be able to make road trips in Brazil and Mexico someday. South Pacific Islands are further from US than Hawaii so we decided that a road trip in US combined with a Hawaii trip would be the smartest choice.

We actually wanted to make a coast to coast US road trip first and take the flight only to Hawaii, but after making the plan and summing up the days we realised we wouldn’t have enough time and that it would be really exhausting. It’s not solely the coast to coast road trip alone that takes much time but reaching certain destination on the way, also takes plenty of it. We revised it and changed it to a shorter US road trip combining it with flights. We made our rod trip in the most beautiful part of US: Arizona, Nevada, California and Utah.

I love Chicago for its architecure, and even though we only had the chance to see the downtown by night, it looked very impressive. Chicago’s cuisine is best known for its deep-dish pizzas, but my favourite was a simple hot dog we had with my sister, at Portillo’s retro decorated fast food chain in Des Plaines, Chicago. Unfortunately is was also the only good meal I had in the whole US trip.

I thought I would make this post about the entire US trip, but I have too many places to show you guys, so I’ll go solely with the ones from Chicago for this post.