No, you’ve not entered a time warp, it’s not St. Patrick’s day again, this is me, the last time I went out on a night on the town in Chicago.
St.Patricks day, 2006, Amber and I started drinking around noon and we ended up spending the night in a number of bars and clubs with some random Chi-town people we met on our travels.
It would seem that I’m developing a framework for Chicago trips, get lost en route to Navy Pier, get drunk and stay out all night.
This night, was the later of the two, after the former, had happened during the day. The group was divided about what they wanted to do, there was three schools of thought,
1 – Stay in the city and just go out after a day of sight-seeing, dressed, ‘as is’
2 – Come back out to the ‘burbs in the train, take a time out, have a shower and go back in to the city later in the evening for a night on the town.
3 – Come back out to the ‘burbs in the train, take a time out, have a shower and go out, but go out in the ‘burbs somewhere close to the hotel.
I, personally, was in the third and final group which ended up being what we did – eventually. Originally, I went down to the hotel bar to see who was going and who was staying, Brendan was sitting there on his todd, looking pretty sorry for himself and seemed ok at the suggestion that it was just he, Nicky and I going out. (I think he was just homesick and needed to get out of the hotel as they’d all been spending a lot of time there and the thought of being in bed at 11pm on a Saturday night, while in the US just depressed him!)
After a while, we managed to round up Sinead and John to join us as well and our merry trio became a quintet! We had two choices of bars to frequent, ‘Dicks place’ (or ‘Deeeks’ as the shuttle driver had said to us on the way back to the hotel from the train station earlier) or Rocky Vanders.
We asked the driver and he said Rocky’s had it, so that’s where we went.
I’ll tell you now, it wasn’t pretty! haha! We ended up with a kitty going and I ended up ordering the drinks after starting with my ‘Apple Jolly Rancher’. I asked for a bomb-pop and we ended up with a sort of bastard-ised version of it as they didn’t have everything they needed to make it. We had Jaeger bombs, frozen margaritas (strawberry and regular) and these things called a ‘Lunch Box’,
It had beer (Blue Moon), Orange Juice and a shot of Amaretto that you drop into it (and down the lot). I don’t even drink beer – not EVER, never, never, NEVER and I LOVED it!!
John loved all of the drinks I was ordering…
John, surprisingly enough, comes from my home town of Newry. In fact, he used to live less than 10 minutes away from the house I grew up in. It really is a small world, eh?
I should have posted the numerous ‘takes’ that it took to get this photo right, blurry, camera dropping and not having both of us in the picture were among the various issues we had…
It was a great night, we sat having the craic for AGES. I really wanted to dance, the beats were, I dunno, ‘me’. It was like listening to a mix on my Ipod – I just wanted to dance. There came a point where I managed to guilt Brendan in to dancing (I was a little upset and apparently playing the ‘pity me’ card worked well), we also got Sinead and John up to dance too.
Once we were on the floor, we stayed up there for ages (including taking a shot on the dance floor too!) We didn’t head back to the hotel until after 4am where the girls went straight up to bed and the boys and I sat out front of the hotel for a while. John disappeared just after 5am, shortly after which, I got really cold, so Brendan and I moved from the random bench outside, in to the hotel lobby to chat for a while longer (I was still a little upset and the poor fella got my life history) before turning in for the night.
I went to bed at 7.15am and got up at 10.15am.
Man. I can’t remember the last time in my life I was that hardcore (probably the last time I was in Chicago!!! LOL!) – but, that said, it was a cracking night and I had a blast!