May

After farewelling our lovely April visitors, Laura and I headed to Orlando in Florida for her final cheerleading competition. We flew down on Friday, 2nd May and came home Monday the 5th.

For those that don't know, Orlando is the theme park capital on the East coast. Parks include Disney World, EPCOT, SeaWorld, Universal Studios and also the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, to name a few. Orlando is also home to the Orange County Convention Centre (second largest in the US at approximately 650,000 square metres), which is all we saw!

She's a big one.

The hotel Laura and I stayed at was attached by air-bridge which made it very convenient to run back and forth between the two (mainly for me, Laura basically stayed at the convention centre all day Saturday and Sunday).  It was huge and filled with cheerleaders, dancers and volleyballers who were all in town for end of season competitions. It certainly gave me plenty to explore while I waited around for Laura's teams to compete. 

Reception area

Tennis court

Pool 1

Pool 2

I also got possibly the best spelling of my name since we've been state-side here:

Laura competed in two teams in Orlando, hence why we didn't have any spare time. Laura competed with her normal team (4th Gear) and also a slightly higher graded team (X-Machine) where her tumbling skills were put to use.

Laura ready to compete, feat. Convention Centre

 

4th Gear in action, 3rd place in their division

X-Machine in action, 2nd place in their division.

After returning home we prepared for our May visitors: my auntie, uncle and cousin (Rose, Geoff and Jessica) who were over here from the Gold Coast. They had already spent a few days in New York and were in DC for almost two weeks, staying with us for one week and at a hotel for the rest of the time. 

More organised travellers I have never met. I think they covered just about every Smithsonian museum, including the zoo to see the pandas and the Air and Space museum out near Dulles airport. They also saw all the monuments around the mall, the Capitol Building, the Australian Embassy, Arlington Cemetary and Mt Vernon. 

While Rose, Geoff and Jessica were staying with us we celebrated my birthday with a dinner at a local restaurant.

Hip hip hooray!

On Friday the 9th Russ and I attended a Navy dinner at the Australian Embassy hosted by David Frost, Naval Attache here in DC, to commemorate the Battle of the Coral Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea

The special guest for the evening was Kevin Rudd, Ambassador of Australia to the US who attended with his wife Therese Rain. Ambassador Rudd was actually pretty funny and enjoyed the Navy dining traditions. He was very good at pouring port without letting the bottle leave the table!

All dressed up for the dinner.

Family photo before the visitors left us - headed back to New York for another week.

Russ' contact hours at War College started to significantly reduce as graduation approaches, so we used one of his free days to visit the International Spy Museum https://www.spymuseum.org/

It's pretty much the only museum in DC that you have to pay to enter, and is an interactive experience where you take on the persona of a spy and have to complete tasks. It was a lot of fun, but our favourite part was the Bond in Motion exhibit, where various vehicles from the movies are on display.

Should have been called "Russ in Motion"!

Die Another Day

Quantum of Solace

Die Another Day

Our last big trip was planned for the Memorial Day long weekend where we ticked off my bucket list item and headed to Chicago. What a fantastic city! Although dubbed the windy city, we managed to time our visit such that we had no wind, sunny skies and it wasn't too cold.

We flew in to O'Hare International Airport on Friday 23rd and took the train to the city. A walk of just over a kilometre took us along the river to our hotel, walking past Trump Towers on the way.

Beautiful airport terminal.

Trump Towers by night....

....and day.

Saturday morning we enjoyed a 90 minute architectural river cruise, which Russ and I found fascinating. I think the kids would say that it was interesting, but they were not interested!

Amazing structural engineering on this building, with the base much narrower than the tower.

Car parking in bottom section, apartments above.

Chicago Tribune building.

London House building

St Regis

Looking back at the city where the river meets Lake Michigan.

After the cruise we walked to Millennium Park specifically to see Cloud Gate (also called "the bean"), but we also enjoyed exploring the Jay Priztker Pavillion,  Lurie Gardens and Crown Fountain.

Cloud Gate

Reflection photo.

Underneath Cloud Gate

Jay Pritzker Pavilion https://millenniumparkfoundation.org/art-architecture/pritzker-pavilion/ 

Lurie Garden https://www.luriegarden.org/

Crown Fountain https://millenniumparkfoundation.org/art-architecture/crown-fountain/

Crown Fountain again.

After exploring Millennium Park and having some lunch we headed across town to Willis Tower, the tallest building in Chicago https://www.willistower.com/. We went up to Skydeck, on the 103rd floor https://theskydeck.com/ but didn't go out onto the ledge as the line up was ridiculously long.

Heading up.

The view - that's a big lake!

Another city view.

For any Ferris Bueller's Day Off fans, Ferris, Cameron and Sloane visited Willis Tower during their day. There's a spot marked on the carpet where you can stand to replicate the photo.

After Willis Tower we went back to the hotel to have an early dinner as Russ, Laura and I were headed out to see AC/DC at Soldier Stadium that evening. The tickets were only secured that morning when we discovered the band were in town. Ben opted out as he isn't a huge fan of really loud environments.

Soldier Stadium was just over 3km from our hotel, but we thought we'd Uber there as we knew would have to walk back to the hotel after. Mistake. We spent about 45 minutes sitting in the Uber (to go 3km!) and when we finally got close enough we bailed out and walked the rest of the way. 

AC/DC are old (Brian Johnson is 77 and Angus Young is 70) but they can still perform! We were surprised by the huge turn out. Google tells me there would have been about 60,000 people in attendance.

Ready to rock!

Brian

Angus

Fireworks to end the show.

It was a lot of fun, but I think I was ready to go home when Angus pulled out a 15 minute guitar solo. I'm not kidding! I left my seat, walked up to the toilets, lined up, went and returned to my seat and he was still going!!! 

The next day we headed out after breakfast to the Tribune Tower https://www.architecture.org/online-resources/buildings-of-chicago/tribune-tower

Tribune Tower.

Some of the amazing detail.

There are fragments from all sorts of interesting places embedded into the stone foundation.

Sydney Opera House

Metal from the World Trade Centre

Taj Mahal

From the tribune Tower we then walked down the Michigan Avenue shopping precinct, known as the Magnificent Mile. We walked past the world's largest Starbucks and the Harry Potter store.

Didn't go in. It is only Starbucks after all.

From Magnificant Mile we made our way to the boardwalk along Lake Michigan which was a very popular area for cyclists, runners and dog walkers, on our way to Navy Pier https://navypier.org/

Beach in the distance.

Ben contemplating something.

Navy Pier was a lot of fun. We tried some of Chicago's famous Garrett Popcorn, which was delicious, played some mini golf and ate the most amazing deep dish pizza at Giordano's for a late lunch.

The entrance to Navy Pier.

Yum!

After a walk back to our hotel we all retired to our rooms for a rest before dinner and an early night.

Beautiful walk back to the hotel, through a park...

...and along the river.

The next day we left the hotel at about 10am to get the train back to the airport. The tracks for the trains are above ground which was interesting.

Such a great trip, and a wonderful city that gave Russ and me Melbourne vibes. Probably our favourite place in the US.

The last weekend in May was Ben's final scout trip. The boys headed up to Benner's Meadow Run Campground in Pennsylvania on the Friday afternoon about 3 hours north west of Arlington. You know the drill by now, no phones, no photos.

The weather wasn't kind to the boys, meaning they were setting up tents in the rain, proving for a damp night, but I am assured that's character building.

The next day the boys enjoyed white water rafting on the Youghiogheny River. I imagine they looked something like the pic below, but we'll never know.

The afternoon included fishing and hanging out, with a return home following donuts for breakfast the next morning.

Russ had his War College graduation drinks at Dirty Habit, a very cool restaurant and bar in Penn Quarter in DC on Saturday 31 May (just scraped into this blog!). It was a lovely evening, and wonderful that everyone can relax now as all papers are submitted and grades are finalised.

It's so hard to believe that our time in the US is drawing to a close. How has twelve months gone so fast?!