America 2013: Day Ten - December 1 | Chicago Winnetka Home Alone Portillos Outback Steakhouse

He's got the red, white, and blue flyin' high on the farm, Semper Fi tattooed on his left arm. Spend a little more in the store for a tag in the back that says ‘USA’. He won't buy nothin' that he can't fix with WD40 and a Craftsman wrench. He ain't prejudiced; he's just made in America.

- Toby Keith

People ask me often why I keep going back to America. They make the valid point that I’ve seen a lot of what the country has to offer – though I still haven’t seen some places I’d like to, such as Nashville, Texas and some other places in the deep south – but they don’t understand so much that it’s not the country but the people in in which makes me want to keep coming back.

Some of the best people I know in America reside in Chicago and tonight was our last night before we get on a train and head west to continue our trip. It’s never easy to leave here, but I think it actually gets harder every time. The Thanksgiving weekend has been amazing. I don’t know that I’ve had a better string of days in my life – at least not in recent memory. Everything’s been perfect, from the weather to the company. It’s crazy to think that if we hadn’t met Jamie through my cousin, we wouldn’t have just enjoyed one of the best weeks hanging out in the Chicago suburbs.

We ended it on a high at Outback Steakhouse, which is a really bad impersonation (by Americans, mind you) of what Australia is meant to be like. There were sixteen of us in total: four Aussies and fourteen Americans. Needless to say, it’s way off the mark, but the food and the beer is good. We ended up drinking tall glasses of Fosters to go with our meals, mostly steak and chicken. The food was okay, the dodgy Australian atmosphere not that great, but the company tremendous. Aside from Thanksgiving, definitely the best night of the trip so far.

Kevin, Matt, me, Mike

To start the day, we took a drive out to Winnetka, Illinois, a very upmarket and beautiful Chicago suburb, which is famous for being the location where the fantastic Home Alone films (at least, the first two starring Macaulay Calkin) were filmed. We had an interesting experience trying to find a public restroom, and had to make ‘other arrangements’ when we couldn’t. The less said about that moment, the better!

The Home Alone House

Just before lunch, we drove into Chicago and did some shopping at Sports Authority, a seven-storey mega store selling all sorts of sporting apparel. Their Nike collection is insanely cheap, a hundred dollars or more cheaper than what we’d get in Australia. They also stock just about every single sort of item you could want featuring one of the major sports franchises in this city: the Bears, Blackhawks, Cubs, Bulls and White Sox. We don’t have a place that matches it back at home.

Shopped out, we met Jamie and Will at Portillos, a famous eatery in the downtown area with pulled pork, Chicago-style sausages and a heap of other good food. Portillos is a real institution in this city. A lot of people who’ve been away for a long time go straight down to Portillos (there are some suburban locations, too) and enjoy a good meal, Windy City-style. Lauryn managed to burn herself on the chin by eating an onion ring incorrectly. I know, it’s quite something…

The afternoon was for sightseeing. We managed to get to a few of Chicago’s biggest tourist attractions including Millennium Park, Cloud Gate (better, and colloquially, known as The Bean), the Chicago Art Institute and a German Christmas Market in the middle of downtown. We ended the afternoon walking along the Chicago River back to our car as the sun went down over the cityscape.

It’s bittersweet writing this blog because we leave behind great people in the morning, and will board Amtrak’s California Zephyr for a 51-hour – unless there’s delays – trip west through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and into Oakland/San Francisco in northern California. I love Chicago. It’s one of my favourite cities in the world. I love all my friends who live here. They’re some of the best people in the world. 

At The Bean

I know I’ll be back.

Until then, Chicago…