W-I-L-D WILDCATS

Today's breakfast had been planned to be at 8 AM. Unfortunately, sleeping was a little more crucial. With some sleeping in time we were still able to have some breakfast at the hotel and catch a cab to Northwestern University. It was a longer ride than the ones we had taken before because Northwestern is in Evanston.

Lake Michigan

We arrived with time to spare before the tour so we took some pictures of Lake Michigan. It was almost like an ocean in the mid west! Shuxin and I decided to get your feet little wet and it was pretty much worth having sandy feet afterward. We cleaned ourselves up and headed to the little lounge area to wait for the tour. Not long after it started, and we were surprised because unlike most tours they started with a 45 minute presentation filled with many useful facts and statistics.

When it finally ended around 8 tour guides and either current or recent graduated students and introduced themselves. They told us to choose who wanted to follow either based on their major or interesting thing they did on Campus. Diana, Kachi, and I decided to go with the two for one pair of tour guides. The campus wasn't huge, but the school itself only has about 8,000 under graduates. Despite its size some of its buildings were very beautiful and since it's right by Lake Michigan it would almost feel like home. Except for the snow in the winter, obviously. 

Deering Library, pretty awesome

Just hearing about how flexible Northwestern is, its engineering programs, the financial aid, and how much school spirit they all have made it one of my choices to apply to once I'm a senior. One of the big pluses for me is that because it's a private there wouldn't be out of state tuition yet it's still one of the Big Ten schools. I know I really wasn't so excited to visit Northwestern at first, but it was so great that I bought a t-shirt. Go wildcats! 

The train!

We decided to go take some down time before we met up with Mike's cousin Amy. So we took a train called the "L" to our hotel in downtown Chicago. It was similar to BART back home, but it was on the typical kind of railroad tracks and it was more bus-like on the inside. The one thing they did have in common though was that the stations were not the prettiest sights.

How is a grocery store so aesthetically pleasing?
 When will the bay area ever

In about an hour and after a short walk we were back at our hotel to freshen up. We all either worked on our blogs or tried to organize our luggage since we're leaving tomorrow and have a very early visit to UChicago. Around 5 PM we were back down in the lobby and we met Amy! She's lived in Chicago for about 15 years so we knew we were in good hands. She took us to the most amazing place ever for dinner. It was, in a nutshell, a two-story Italian market with multiple restaurants on top called Eataly. The Italian food options were incredible, there were paninis, pizza, pasta, fresh bread with a bunch of toppings like prosciutto, seafood, you name it. They also had many different wines and beer, I believe, but of course we didn't focus on that. The variety of cheese was breath-taking. Just walking in and smelling everything was enough to make someone's mouth water, and that's only the second floor. The first floor had any kind of sweet dessert you could want. To the left were shelves and crates of Italian chocolates and candies and to the right was a Nutella bar, where you could get Nutella crepes; right next to it was a stand that sold, for lack of a better word, Italian versions of ice cream, i.e Gelato or Sorbet. My favorite spot though was the one with a variety of pastries that I couldn't even pronounce, except for Tiramisu and Cannoli. You could even build your own chocolate box. They looked delicious. Personally, I tried a chocolate chip Cannoli and I was extremely satisfied. It was gone in under a minute.

Huge bouquet of lollipops in the dead
 center of the store

Once we all were content with what we ate, we headed over to the Shake Shack, their shakes are highly praised along with their crinkle-cut fries. I ordered a coffee fair shake and I really liked it, but maybe I would've been happier with a more daring choice. Afterwards, we headed over to Dylan's Candy Bar. It's a two-story candy shop with endless choices and some candy inspired clothing. Seriously, Chicago has a lot of two-story food places. The candy shop was very colorful and smelled delicious too. I didn't have appetite for much of anything, but visiting it was nice.

This picture doesn't do justice to
the amount of people waiting in line

Our last stop of the evening was one that we couldn't do without. We're in Chicago we just had to get Garrett's popcorn. I bought the Garrett's mix or also known as Chicago popcorn, and it consists of caramel popcorn mixed with cheddar popcorn. I've honestly yet to try it because I was full, but as soon as I do I'll post a full length review. Okay maybe not full length, but I'll give my opinion. Although, I'm sure they'll be just as good as all the other food here in Chicago. It was a great end to another fantastic day with my cohort. More happy days to come.