Let the tour begin....

Well the hotel was a buzz as slowly but surely all the participants of the tour started checking into the hotel....... Speaking of the hotel... talk about a comedy of errors... they are really not the most professional place that I have stayed at and I have felt there is always an issue with something that you just roll your eyes when you think you have to get it fixed...  In the past 12 hours I have had to get my room card re configured as everytime I leave the room I could never get back in.... after the 3rd time of being accused of putting it next to mobile and demagnetizing it ( hmm all in half an hour ... i think not ) I politely suggested that there maybe another reason, considering in 4 days it had not happened before... after a little more discussion he decided that maybe the battery was going on the door lock so he would send an engineer to replace..... hmm...still waiting for the engineer from last sunday night for the shower.....

Anyway enough of that..... in the morning we all started to congregate in the breakfast room.....  lots of hugs and hello's with people that we have not seen in ages...

Our tour guide Howard and our Singing Driver Bobby are just the loveliest of people and you just know this is going to be a good time...

We have this big red bus where we can really spread out as there are only around 30 of us... and it was not long before we were all downtown Chicago bound.... The weather was not being kind to us..... ( to all those on face book who told me I would not need my coat and scarf... you were wrong ) ... it was freezing...  We picked up a guide that would talk us through our sight seeing trip through the city....  She guided Bobby from end of Chicago to the other while the whole time giving us a whole heap of information about the city.... Unfortunately it rained the entire time we drove around the city so all the photos are textured with the rain drops that were sitting on the windows..... and the buildings were all lost in the low cloud cover.  Unfortantely one of the highlights of the tour was to visit Millenium Park ... but the weather just made it impossible, she kept delaying our visit in hope that it would clear but it was not to be and she couldn't believe that we could not get one opportunity to visit...

She did a wonderful job with what she had to work with and her knowledge and love of the city really showed through... We ended up at Navy pier where we had a couple of free hours to have lunch and and a wander around to enjoy the atmosphere.  Here you had a plethora of eateries, lots of souvenier shops and a fabulous display of stain glass windows that had been saved from demolition by  Mr Smith a man of great foresight.....  we couldn't imagine that with out him these windows would have been lost...
We have loved Chicago and our only regret was that we didn't make a more of an effort in seeing Millenium park which included Cloud Gate ( the bean ) and Buckingham Fountain ( married with children fame) in the days prior... but we didn't even think that we would be rained out....