September 2 by Lachlan

Today we woke up at seven o’clock am, to get ready to do a bike tour that goes around the lakefront of Chicago. But first, we had to pack up all our belongings to be ready to transfer to a larger room, due to Mum, Abbey and Hamilton, arriving later in the day from New York. We went down to the lobby to have breakfast. After this, we walked down to Navy Pier, a former Navy base, but now a theme park, where the tour service, called bike’n’roll, was situated. We arrived at Navy Pier, one and a half hours early, and we walked around Navy Pier, and looked at some of the attractions like the Ferris Wheel, iMax, and lots of interesting food places, like ‘Futuristic Maccas’ (which wasn’t futuristic at all.) At nine thirty am, we could choose our bikes and helmets, we walker to the stall, and were greeted by our tour guide, Crystal. We adjusted our given bikes, and then waited for all the other participants to arrive for the tour. When they arrived, we set off along the scenic lakefront of Chicago, as we cycled, sometimes Crystal would tell everyone to stop, and told us interesting history of Chicago, like a fair amount of the coastline was originally made out of rubbish! All the beaches along the coast of Lake Michigan are mad-made, because of this. After a while, we went inland into Lincoln Park, where we observed attractions like the conservatory, Lincoln Park Zoo, the Nature Museum, and the recreation of a pond that would be situated in Chicago, if Chicago was not populated. We saw roughly about a third of Lincoln Park, and then Crystal said we decided to walk to the beach and have a swim, in the fresh water lake of Chicago. The water was really cold, but it was good experience to swim in beach with fresh water.  We walked back to Residence Inn, to welcome Hamilton, Abbey and Mum to Chicago. They came earlier than we expected, and greeted them. When they settled in, we showed them around Michigan Avenue, and went to Trump tower, the second tallest tower in Chicago. Later, we caught a train in the subway to Rush Street, where we had some famous deep panned, pizza. We walked back to Residence Inn after this.