We left Toronto on Thursday for the train to Chicago. We got to Buffalo where we had to wait for near enough 12 hours for the connecting train. We spent all day at the shopping mall, where Matt went crazy and bought a Nintendo DS out of pure boredom! Carol and me went to the cinema to watch Sex and the City which was really good. Leaving the mall was a bit of a disaster as it was chucking it down and the taxi wouldn't come and pick us up as he didn't understand what exit we were at! Luckily for us someone who worked in the Mall gave us a lift to the station.

We eventually arrived in Chicago on Friday after picking up an extra 3 hours on the train! How we do not know as it was only half an hour late when we got on the train!

Friday night we had tickets to go see R.E.M at the arena. It was a massive arena where the Chicago Bulls play their basketball games. R.E.M were good.

Saturday we went on the walking tour around Chicago which was nice but yet again it was really hot and we got a bit sunburnt again even though the sun wasn't out!

Saturday tea we signed up for a meal cooked for us for free by the girl scouts. It was really good, we had pizza and girl scout cookies like in Friends!

Saturday night we went on the organised pub crawl which as you can see from the photos we had a good time! Met loads of nice people. Matt went to every ATM machine in the area we were and after about 10 machines he finally got some money, which is why he is so happy on the photo!

We got quite drunk and didn't get in until around 4am, we danced to Whitesnake, which Matt put on the juke box! We danced like crazy fools!

Sunday was a great day! We didn't want to get up at all! Carol and me went to the zoo in Lincoln park which was free. We love the free stuff! Carol loved the zoo as they had king penguins and she got very excited about seeing them.

Tonight (sunday) we went to the blues festival, which has been on all weekend and we caught a bit of BB King, who was headlining the las day of the festival. We also went to Millenium Park and saw the kidney bean which was quite cool to see.

We are now preparing ourselves for the beast! The nickname for our 50 hour train journey that we have tomorrow which we are all really looking forward to! We definately need to get some more card games for this journey!

Thanks for all the messages and we will update after our time in Vancouver if we survive the beast!!!

Speak soon

Liz and Carol

xxxxx