Batman.

Kitty and I decided to do a switch in the alternate day blogging so I could be a geek and write a full review about The Dark Knight Rises. We were up bright and early, enjoyed some gluten free cereal for breakfast, and headed out to the cinema at half past ten. The cinema wasn't as busy as we thought it would be when we arrived, considering it was only the second day of its release, but it soon filled up.

The film was immense. I've literally been waiting for it to come out ever since I saw The Dark Knight when I was in America four years ago. Obviously I don't want to give the plot away for those who haven't seen it so I'll try and stay very generalised. People have been moaning that there were quite a few new characters, but they all added to the plot line. Tom Hardy was brilliant as Bane and Marion Cotillard's character proved to be a huge twist to the plot. Michael Caine had all the emotional scenes and Gary Oldman was outstanding and cool as ever. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character was an interesting addition and proved many of our theories correct. Anne Hathaway's Catwoman was also excellent, new level of respect for her. In our discussion the previous evening we had joked about how Cillian Murphy would probably make a cameo appearance like he usually does in Christopher Nolan films, so all four of us burst out laughing when he turned up.

The film itself nicely rounded off Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy but also left it pretty open ended for more without leaving any questions unanswered. Don't know how this was possible but it was. There was a lot more emotion in this film, coming mainly from Michael Caine's Alfred and his relationship with Bruce Wayne. Christian Bale did a good job of balancing all the strange emotions that come with being Batman and kept up his hilarious Batman voice throughout of course. The fights between Batman and Bane were at times almost painful to watch, because they were quite clearly painful for Batman. He becomes a different type of hero in this film, having taken on the responsibility for Harvey Dent's death at the end of the previous film. Christopher Nolan definitely likes to play with the notion of terrorism and heroism, portraying both from different angles.

Here's my one tiny hint and personal highlight to the film. At one point, near the end Gary Oldman reads out the famous final lines from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." As someone who had to study this book, the meaning behind this was an excellent addition. And for those assuming things from reading that, you're wrong. But I promise once you figure it out, it makes the end of the film so excellent. Kitty and Emma greatly appreciated it once I had explained the meaning behind the words, and the twist at the end of Tale of Two Cities. I'll say no more. Except that, I predicted that someone would reveal themselves to be called Robin in the film and I was once again right! Always right.

Post cinema, we went for lunch at a really nice vegetarian restaurant called Fresh, before wandering through Toronto to check out the area of Kensington Market. This was a cool area full of quirky shops. Toronto is very much a young people city. We stopped at a cafe where the two people behind the counter happened to be English, one was from Preston and one was from London, so that was entertaining!

After wondering around for a while, we made our way back to Emma's as it was about five o clock, stopping to pick up a duck in Chinatown on our way.

James had gone Batman crazy and wanted to start watching the Tim Burton Batmans so we watched the one with Jack Nicholson's joker in and had a nice simple dinner of rice noodles and bits of duck. Kitty also made her famous gluten free chocolate and peanut butter cookies so we were all very happy!!

You ain't nothing but a hound dog

Oh how we love getting up at 4.30am to leave for the airport in time. Not. We had been careful to pack everything properly the previous evening whilst we still had the lights on so we were creeping about in the dark getting ready. Some people were beginning to get annoyed with us but I didn't really care much since I'd been woken up every morning by people creeping about and getting ready. It was our turn for pay back!

We left just after half five, and went to catch the metro to the airport. Luckily, our one day passes from the previous day still worked, as it hadn't been 24 hours since we bought them, so we didn't have to faff around buying tickets. Success!

Once at the airport and through security, we spent ages trying to find a currency exchange so we could get some Canadian dollars, since we were headed to Toronto. This was the morning that the really horrible Batman cinema shooting was all over the news so we listened and watched people talking about that as we waited to board the plane. One day America will learn to sort out its mental health system and make guns illegal, but until then they're just encouraging people with psychological issues to acquire firearms and go on shooting rampages.

Our plane was possibly my favourite yet. It was more a bus than a plane, with just two seats either side of the aisle, and was pretty tiny in general. The films you could watch were amazing: Kitty watched the Hunger Games and I went for the Sound of Music. Unfortunately, the flight was only an hour and a half long so we didn't even get to see the whole film, but they definitely kept us entertained!

When we arrived in Toronto, we had a reasonably nice security person for once (usually they're pretty psycho with the questions), and went out to the front of the terminal to wait for Emma, who we were staying with. Emma is a friend of Kitty's brother, who he met when he was at university in Toronto for a year.

She wasn't there when we got through the arrivals gate and Kitty started to panic because she realised we didn't even have Emma's number or address. Fail. Soon enough though, Emma came running through the door motioning for us to come outside as she had parked on the drop off road and didn't want to get a ticket.

Emma was very excited to have us and we had a great car journey into Toronto telling her all about our trip so far! Mission of the day was grocery shopping so that we had some food for our stay. We hit up numerous supermarkets around Toronto, including one that was purely organic and healthy, and one which was huge and really nice, it made grocery shopping something that you wanted to do!!!

By the time we got back to Emma's flat it was late afternoon. Emma had borrowed her mum's car to come and collect us, so we briefly met her mum, who was waiting at the flat, before she left to drive home. Emma lives with her boyfriend, James and her dog, Jack. She also has a huge house bunny which is really friendly. Emma and James live on the 23rd floor and their balcony overlooks Lake Ontario. It really is a beautiful view. At one point, Emma was on the balcony with Jack and somehow managed to drop her iPhone over the edge. This wasn't what we were expecting of our afternoon. However, when Emma went down to retrieve what she thought were going to be the pieces of her phone, she found it slightly scratched, but intact and still working. Apparently your iPhone can fall 23 floors, bounce of two balconies and survive?! Don't try this at home kids.

There's a barbecue available for everyone in the apartment building to use so we went down to cook some sausages and take Jack out. There were lots of friendly people and their dogs milling about. It never ceases to amaze me how many people have dogs that live in huge apartment buildings.

Emma and James' TV is actually a huge computer screen which means you can basically watch anything using the Internet. We decided we wanted to watch a horror film, and chose Red State, a film based on the Westborough Baptist Church, i.e. the crazy Christians who protest with signs about how 'God hates fags' or whatever. In the film they also kill people. Standard.

We also decided we really needed to see the new Batman film asap, so James booked us tickets for the next morning. He had started watching Batman Begins in preparation for seeing the new film, so we watched the end of that before heading to bed on our blow up mattress.

A pier with a view

Today was our last day together so we decided to go downtown for some good old American breakfast. Clare was in a different hostel so we met up with her by a cute market, the market sold everything! While waiting for Clare we went around eating samples from all the different stands, the cheese was our favourite (Obz) and once Clare arrived Lauren went up to ask them if they had any recommendations of good places to get breakfast. Lauren suggested this by saying 'I'll go ask the cheese man' which we all found thoroughly amusing, the stand was full of customers so Amy, Clare and I watched Lauren casually eating samples looking indepth at the ingredients until she got to ask him for places to eat. Lolz.

The place they recommended was never found so instead we decided to go into a dingy cafe which was full of locals/business types - we were greatest by a greasy aggro waitress who sat us down abruptly before asking us if we wanted drinks. We all declined as we didn't know what we wanted yet - this didn't go down well so we were on edge from the beginning. When we ordered our main we asked for drinks that were included on the menu - this made her blood boil and she told us off for not asking for them before - she be cray. I didn't want a drink but after ordering she told me not to be scared of her if I wanted a drink, this terrified us all even more. Needless to say we were all pretty thirsty for the duration of the morning.

Our meals were hilarious, Lauren had the cheap cheese you put in burgers in her omelette and our eggs looked like something you'd find on an aeroplane. We found this all highly amusing and enjoyed watching our crazy waitress try and make up for how evil she was earlier. Needless to say our tips were not generous.

After our breakfast we waddled around downtown Chicago before deciding to go visit the art institute which had an exhibition on Litchenstein. We spent the rest of the day doing the 'museum walk' around the different exhibitions, me and Clare found great humour in looking at portraits and guessing what they really looked like/if they were fat or not. Great fun.

The Litchenstein exhibition was amazing, my favourite piece was a giant student composition book. Amaze!

Soon it was time to leave as the wiffy at the hostel had been terrible and I was craving my daily Internet fix, also our legs were aching from the slow museum walk we'd been doing, so we headed to the gift shop. Gift shops are one of my weak spots however compared to Lauren and Clare I did very well and even encouraged Sparks on a purchase!

An hour or so after getting to the gift shop we made our way to Starbucks for a wiffy party and coffee fix, here we searched for good places to get pizza including places that did gluten free pizza -woo!

After filling myself up with caffeine and checking where to go we made our way to Lou Malnati's for a deep dish pizza party!! The place was rammed - a very good sign! We ordered our pizzas and I discovered my gluten free one had a sausage meat base - so gross, so good. Unlucky for any vegetarian coeliacs though haha!!
When our pizzas arrived there was complete silence as we indulged in them. Amazing.

By the time we were done it was getting dark so we decided to go to the pier by the planetarium (as recommended by our friend Omar) as it had a view of the whole city back across Lake Michigan.

We took to the streets and, with Clare as our map leader, found a spot just before the planetarium, the views from here alone were amazing and we weren't even half way out yet! We decided to not look at the views until we reached the pier so walked past people 'oooing' and 'awwing' desperately trying to not catch a glimpse of the view. Finaly we made it and let out a huge 'woahhhh' as we turned and saw the city. The view was insane! Such a beautiful city! We sat and stared in awe - Omar did us proud. After snapping the view we started finding amusing ways of taking photos which usually incolved doing Clare's snake face or some sort of jump! After a while it started to rain so we grabbed our things and headed back saying our last goodbye to Clare and Lauren as we were leaving the next morning. It's been such a laugh hanging out with them both and we can't wait to see them again hopefully Clare in the UK and Lauren later on in our trip :)

Thrift Store Cray.

We had arranged to meet Lauren at her new adopted bachelor pad at 12 to go for some kind of brunch in the Wicker Park area, so we had a nice leisurely wake up. The house was really easy to find and in a very nice neighbourhood. The apartment itself was very obviously lived in by boys, who had half moved out, leaving behind lots of stuff in cupboards, the sofa and tv, and a pet snake in one of the bedrooms. The revelation that there was a pet snake prompted Clare into telling us about a pet snake she once had and doing an impression of the snake when it went to eat a frozen mouse. There are no words for how genius this impression was, we were literally crying with laughter, and it caused this same reaction whenever it was repeated over the next couple of days.

So, we were meant to be going for breakfast/lunch, but we ended up waltzing around Wicker Park and the surrounding area for ages and went to get a coffee at a place recommended which did an amazing latte made with both coconut milk and cayenne pepper in. Sounds bizarre but it was really good!!

En route back towards either Lauren's or finding food (whichever came first), we stumbled across something which would significantly change our lives for the better. As we stood waiting to cross a road, Lauren pointed out a sign for a thrift store and we all agreed we wanted to check it out since we were all into second hand/vintage clothes and had heard wonderful tales of American thrift stores. We were in for the best treat of our lives...

First of all, it was huuuuuge. Clothes literally everywhere. Lauren suggested we got a trolley as we went in, which we all thought was a slightly OTT move at the time. How wrong we were. Each aisle was clearly labelled, and each item of clothing had a small label on it with a price we couldn't work out. When we asked someone they confirmed it said $1.90 or whatever and from this point was when we went crazy. Starting off in the denim section we were trying on shorts over our clothes, I even managed to paper cut my thumb with one of the labels on some shorts I tried on. All very exciting. We all kept running off to different sections and using the trolley as base camp. Clare came back with some excellent blazer finds, Lauren was picking up all sorts of things wild and wonderful, including two amazing 90s jackets with excellent patterns on. Kitty and I started by focusing on the denim shorts section, but soon moved on to other items including silk scarves, belts and blouses. Clare found an amazing small red leather suitcase for carting all her excess purchases home. This is also mine and Kitty's plan for New York; buy a cheap bag and full it with all the purchases!!

After a while realised it was nearly 4 o clock and we had been running excitedly around the thrift store for over 3 hours (!!!!) with all thoughts of hunger or needing a wee, which were present when we first entered, forgotten. After helping Lauren decide which items weren't 100% necessary to buy, we headed out with our overflowing trolley of goods. For $14 Kitty got some denim shorts, two beaut scarves, a real leather belt and an amazing denim shirt. For $15, I got two pairs of Wrangler denim shorts, two patterned blouses, and a floral shirty thing which looks better as a blazer. Incredible!!

After the purchase of basically entire new wardrobes, we finally remembered we were hungry and went in search of food. The guy who was letting Lauren crash in his flat had recommended a Costa Rican restaurant on the corner near his house so we rocked up there. Our waiter was called Omar and was super friendly, giving us a list of places to go that we would never have thought of. The food was epic; Clare and I had burritos, Lauren had fish and Kitty had steak with onions, egg, rice and beans with a taco on the side. Safe to say she didn't eat it all! Omar came and sat with us after our meal, bringing us all a free milkshake, made with oats in and sprinkled with cinnamon, as he chatted to us and wrote us our list of where to go.

After this magnificent day of excitement of joy, our mood was lessened when we arrived back at Lauren's and couldn't open the door. All four of us tried in various ways, to no avail. After sitting on the steps of the house in silence for a while, we decided to head back to the hostel.

Clare had actually already checked out of our hostel as she was meant to be checking in to another hostel in downtown Chicago. Lauren decided she would go back to the flat and try and get in again/hope one of the guys would show up, then we would join her once she was in. Luckily, as she got back, one of the guys arrived to pick up his snake and showed her the trick to opening the door.

Clare left the hostel with us but headed to her new hostel downtown instead of coming to back to Lauren's. We were heading there to have a short cutting and fraying session. This turned into an epicly deep life chat whilst slowly cutting the shorts. It suddenly started torrentially raining, and there was a dramatic thunderstorm which was exciting except we had to walk back to the hostel at some point, so we waited for it to cool off before heading back, failing to avoid the huge puddles!

Kray update of the day: when we got up, she was sat on her bed pretending to read some innocent young girls palms. Kitty, who was nearest this, enjoyed the soothing talk but was afraid Kray would try and read hers! She was making abstract guesses about this girl in the way of boyfriends and relatives dying of cancer which were all wrong. Worst palm reading ever. Also, she really creepily watched me moving around the room whilst I was getting things from my bag so we made sure everything was always locked away; after the yoghurt incident, who knows what else she might be inclined to casually steal!