Wednesday, July 22, 2009 – Chicago – New York City

It was decided that we would sleep in for once and we took our sweet time leaving Char’s aunt’s house. She made us a delicious breakfast and we were entertained by Paul, Char’s little cousin, while we waited for the food to be ready. Thank you so much for your generous hospitality and internet access.

The drive to New York was estimated at around 12 hours. In Girls In America time, that’s probably closer to 15 hours! We were travelling on the I80 and in the eastern part of the US this is mainly a toll road. We hate toll roads. You have to take a ticket when you get on the road and then you can’t get off unless you pay money!!!!!!! We felt trapped and stuck and claustrophobic. To further enhance the stuck feeling, there are little service areas at the side of the road. They are basically glorified rest stops and we do kind of like them except for the fact that they are your only choice unless you want to pay. At one of these stops, we struck upon the glorious news that we would be passing practically right through Amish country! This was exciting and we set off in search of horses and buggies! Our trusty GPS found a little Amish town called Shipshewana somewhere in Indiana and it was full of Amishness and tourists. We felt a little sorry for the Amish people because it seemed like they were part of some weird zoo or something. There were tons and tons of tourists taking pictures and buying homemade stuff. The only pictures we took were of the horses and buggies so we wouldn’t invade their privacy.

Did you know that driving to New York City from Chicago you can go through seven different states? Yeah that’s seven [SEVEN, 7, seven] - Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Admittedly Michigan was a two minute detour, but if you were that close wouldn’t you want to take a picture of the state sign on self timer from the hood of your car? Yes we thought so too.

New York City beckoned us from the horizon but the toll booth was the first thing to call out to us. Paying $9 to cross a stupid bridge is ridiculous, New York mayor, whoever you are! Too bad I can’t swim carrying a suitcase. We found our hostel without too many delays and went to bed around 2 am.