Our room only has two beds, but it has a pretty big and comfy couch as well. Yesterday we started brainstorming ways to choose who would get the couch and came up with a few ideas. We talked about Rock Paper Scissors, mortal combat, and finally, I proposed that I would take the couch the first night if Shreejal or Isaac took it on the second night. They agreed, played Rock Paper Scissors, and Shreejal emerged victorious, the only one who will have a bed both nights.
I woke up this morning at 7:30. After waking up, I took a shower and was downstairs at 8:00 to meet up with The Admiral and Kayla. We were ready to leave at 8:15 and headed off to find some breakfast.
We were originally going to try and find a Starbucks or some other coffee shop, but I saw a store claiming “imported Italian products”, and I asked John if I could pop in real quick to look for an Italian drink I have trouble finding in the Bay Area. When we walked in, we noticed that they sold breakfast sandwiches, and since I could not find what I was looking for, we decided to grab breakfast there instead. I had a bacon, egg, and cheese on a brioche roll which was very good.
After breakfast, we walked a few minutes to the Elevated Train, which is like BART in the Chicago area. We took the Red line for a few stops, then transferred to the Purple line which acts as an express train during rush hour. It made our journey to Evanston much faster. From the station in Evanston we walked through a residential neighborhood and parts of the campus to get to the Segal Visitor Centre where our tour would start.
Now, before our tour, I knew next to nothing about Northwestern. The limit of my knowledge was that their color was purple. I have been to a few college presentations in the past year, and I have never really been completely sold on a school. I thought it was just because any school would just be fine for me. Today though, I was amazed by Northwestern. It had the excellent academics and multitude of clubs that lots of competitive colleges boast about but unlike many liberal arts colleges doesn't have strict base class requirements. I also loved the location. Evanston is beautiful, and the lake is right next to the university. Also important to me is the emphasis the assistant admissions officer and our student tour guide put on the quality of food in and around the university. We experienced this firsthand at lunch today, but more on that in a bit. I also like how Evanston feels like a college town but is also so close to Chicago. Apart from that, I don't know how to put it into words but Northwestern checked all my boxes. The tour folks did a good job.
After the VERY convincing tour, we walked into the chilly waters of the lake on the small beach by the visitor center. It was nice to let my toes breathe though.
We then had lunch a little bit off the Northwestern campus at a Venezuelan street food restaurant. None of us had ever had Venezuelan food before, so we thought it would be cool to try it out. I thought it was very good, and this really added integrity to the claims the Northwestern salespeople had made.
We then hopped on the train to get back to our hotel. This time we didn't have the luxury of the express train since it only ran during rush hour. It was alright though because I used the ride back to start writing this post in efforts to finish earlier tonight. When we got back to the hotel we rested for a bit. We watched the second half of the Brazil-Belgium game, and I started on the textbook readings for class on Monday.
After our break, we met up in the lobby to head out to Millenium Park. We walked along Michigan Ave for about a block when I learned that a friend I hadn't seen in a year was across the street. We popped into the Nike store to quickly say hi, then went to the Apple store because The Admiral needed to buy a new adapter.
Once we got to Millenium park we started just wandering to see sights but ended up in a maze of kid's play structures and small children. Once we found our way out, he saw the famous Bean. The Bean might have been the tourist attraction I was most looking forward to seeing in Chicago, I don't know why, I guess I just like how it looks and its originality.
By then we were pretty hungry, so we quickly checked Yelp and went to a hip Asian fusion restaurant called Bright Wok Kitchen. We had some stir-fry bowls that tasted really good and were a nice ending to our day. (We ubered back to the hotel afterward, all of us very tired).
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