Day 1

Day One:

                                                   
My day started on Sunday night at 6:30 pm when we boarded the train from Albany to Chicago. We had two business class seats and chose the seats that were both aisle and window. It was nice, around 7:07 we departed from the Albany train station. We both fell asleep around 10 but were awakened many times throughout the night. The funniest out of all of these was around 2 in the morning, one of the conductors grabbed my shoulder and said are you, Benjamin or James Sheffield,  I said yes and he said, "ok I am having all the passengers sign this now instead of later just so we don't forget before you leave." after that he woke up my dad and did the same, it was really weird and funny that he would choose this time to do this task. The next morning we woke up around 6 and were on the train until 10:30 Chicago time or, 11:30 New York time.

Once we arrived in Chicago we admired the beautiful train station which even when under construction was still shockingly beautiful, then caught an uber to the Chicago Institute of art once there we saw hundreds of beautiful European pieces of art. Ranging from Picasso, Dega, to Monet, it was truly awe-inspiring. To see all of the different styles of art and specifically art pieces in person that I had heard about in the past such as... 

Van Gogh pointillism portrait 

Picassos Old guitarist 

Georges Seurat A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Or Monets Haystacks

Each of these invoked a feeling inside of me which is what I believe art should do. Furthermore, specifically with the last Monet, it brought back memories of home and how the air would feel crisp and harsh on my skin on mornings like that one. After the Museum we went to our Air BnB a small but nice place with a good place to work in the lobby.

 Eventually, after my dad had a call with his advisor, we went to a place called Lou Malnati's for some deep dish pizza it was honestly all that we expected and more, the strange thing that we found was that unlike other types of pizza the crust was much more of a hard bread than just your average crust. The flavors of the butter crust, tomato, cheese and sausage in this way really made it one of my favorite pizzas, but also in a category totally separate from new york pizzas. 

Once back at our small apartment we chose to work downstairs in the lobby. This is due to the small size of the apartments here. The lobby is such a nice place to work and is very obviously meant for working. Once we finished work, we decided to take advantage of the pool and took a nice refreshing swim before going to bed