I had so much fun in Chicago this weekend. You have no idea. It was definitely an experience I will never forget and I am so glad I spent the money to go! Everyone's been asking me how it went, so I decided to create a timeline.
Thursday
We left around 8 and drove 8 hours to Chicago. It was long and pretty much uneventful. Coming into Illinois, there are tolls, which I have never encountered in my life or heard of. So that was an experience. We missed the first toll, so we had to go online and pay it off. I'm not sure I like the idea of a toll. I get it probably goes towards maintaining the roads and such, but we had to pay 5 different tolls. The highest toll was $3.60, the cheapest being $1.50. And if you don't have cash, you have to do it online and hope you remember what tolls you passed through. It was a nuisance. But when we left home, we had a cool, foggy sunrise!
Friday
We got to sleep in a bit and then headed over to the Adler Planetarium, which was pretty neat. The outside was beautiful because it's right on the water, so you get to look out at the city a bit.
And they had all the members of the Chinese Zodiac out front, too.
We went to a show about Undiscovered Planets that was really interesting and entertaining about how they are finding new planets out in other galaxies. They use these telescopes that find stars like our sun in other galaxies and then just keep the telescope on that sun and document all the dips in starlight, which happen when a planet moves in front of it, revolving around that sun. And using the info from the star light dips, they can tell how big it is and the density and what it might be made of. How neat is that!?
We even got to look at the sun and some sun spots through a special telescope. Fun!
From there, we headed to Willis Tower, or the old Sears Tower, and made our way to the skydeck 103 stories up and stepped out onto the ledge and took a bunch of pictures.
Here's a pic my brother took of me on the ledge. I thought it was great.
Then we headed over to Navy Pier and took a cruise around the water front at all the different architectural masterpieces the city has to offer. It got kind of cold at the end of the trip, but it was a fun experience.
Then we were gonna go to the House of Blues, but the traffic was so bad getting back to the hotel, that we didn't have time to change and then make it for our reservations. So we decided to go to an improv comedy club. It was great! They were so hilarious. I think it was called ComedySPortz or something like that. Great time.
Saturday
We finally got to go to the convention!! We went to Mark Sheppard's panel first. He was pretty fun. I wasn't able to get too many good shots of him, unfortunately. But i was two feet away from him at several points in the panel because he came and walked around in the audience, which I thought was really nice of him! We had some time to kill after that, so we bought a couple nicknacks and went to my first photo op with Richard Speight Jr.
He was pretty fun. Then we went to another panel. Richard Speight Jr, Matt Cohen (So hott), and Rob Benedict. They were a fun group put together. All really funny.
Then was Misha Collins. This guy. I could ramble on and on and on about this guy. He is so genuinely nice. To everyone. Several people told him how much of an inspiration he is to people and how so many people look up to him, and he just buried his hands in his face in embarrassment. And because he is becoming aware of just how popular and loved he really is, he's using it to help charities. IT's just so amazing to me. The whole cast, to me, is super down to earth and humble. And I think that's hard to find with actors in popular shows.
Misha's panel was hilarious because the first question was asking him if he could do a whole response without using 'um' or any filler words/sounds. And he never realized until then how often he says um. It was hilarious the whole time.
Then we got to do Misha's Photo op. I was so nervous. I don't remember looking at the camera. Thankfully, I did. He hugged me. He. Hugged. Me.
Then we ate at the hotel and waited for the picture to develop before we left for the night. The hotel, I must add was so huge! It was definitely the fanciest hotel I had ever been in. Sad we couldn't afford to stay there!
Sunday
We had to be at the convention early on sunday because Jensen's photo op was right away. Gosh, I forgot who I was, how to talk, everything. Thankfully, I was able to be polite with him and was again looking at the camera. I felt like a noodle. It was great.
Look at that sexy bastard. Mmf.
Then we went to Collin Ford's panel and waited for Jared and Jensen's panel, which was fun and interesting, I think. They are just a great couple of guys. Ugh. I cannot stress that enough. We got to do a little shopping Sunday, too. And when I say shopping, I mean, we walked around a mall and didn't buy anything because everything was so freaking expensive. IT was terrible.
Monday
We got up at 6 and started for home. Pretty uneventful trip back.
I had an amazing trip. I am so freaking excited I went. Now, I just have to figure out which item on my bucket list I can cross off next. Probably my tattoo that I want. I am getting it before the first of the year. I guarantee this. It's happening.
