Well then, didn’t I feel rough as all hell when I woke up in Chicago. As tempting as it is to blame the aggressive air conditioning in the hotel, I rather think the more likely culprit was the way way way way way too much booze the previous day. I was, therefore, a curious mix of extremely happy and rancid.

The great news of the morning was that the weather was amazing. No clouds anywhere. Lovely.

For some reason that I still don’t know several days later, a load of people were queuing up on the second bridge. Seemed a bit early for the steakhouse to be opening but maybe that’s how they do breakfast here.

Out I went into the sunshine. Absolutely gorgeous walk along the river towards the lake, described to me in years prior as “a legitimate body of water”. The river walk in Chicago was full of runners, tons of them. I was a bit jealous, it would be an amazing place to go for a run especially in weather like this but the opportunity wasn’t there for me. A vigorous-ish walk was about all I had in me, and it had me feeling way better than when I woke.

Could’ve done with my sunglasses to be honest. I ended up walking for about, I dunno, 50 minutes or so - river, lakefront, then back through downtown and to the hotel.

People were starting to arrive in town, hundreds of folk clutching coffees and bagels on their way to work. It was about 8am when I got back to my room. Grabbed my stuff and left straight away, heading to the subway.

The Chicago subway looks exactly like it does on the movies. Amazing, elevated lines above the busy streets with the classic silver carriages. Getting up to the narrow, rickety wooden platform was considerably more of an effort than expected and, huh, I thought I’d walked my hangover off but it came back with a vicious vengeance once I was onboard the orange line to Midway.

The train never got busy and a podcast was engaging enough to occasionally divert my attention from the pain. It’s only a half hour or so ride to Midway, albeit it then felt like another half hour walk from the station to the check-in desks. With my flight at 1105 I’d arrived almost exactly 2hrs in advance, in fact just a bit too early such that the desks weren’t open yet. Grabbed a seat for a bit, taking the opportunity to prepare for security by putting most of the stuff from my pockets into a bag.

Checked in, dropped my suitcase and wasn’t given a receipt. Hmm. I was also asked “do you have a secondary travel document?”. I said “er, my CTA?” “ETA” “Oh, yeah, that”. Thanks entirely to Helen’s insistence that I print important stuff out to bring on the trip, I did in fact have my Canadian non-visa visa to hand. And just like that I was all set.

Security was painless. Midway is a lovely little airport. As soon as you’re through there’s a huge food hall with an Irish bar in the centre. Despite feeling better, I did consider a hair of the dog but first I wanted to orient myself. Gate A3 was where I needed to be, and it was only a couple of minutes walk - past the museum-y exhibit bit with a plane hanging off the ceiling.

What I wanted more than a beer was some food. Hadn’t eaten since the meal on the plane yesterday and needed something. The choices were huge: pizza, bar food, burritos, doughnuts, cheese sandwiches, curry, burgers, just loads and loads of glorious junk. I wandered up and down and up and down, even poked my head into a second Irish bar before backing out and finally settling on pizza. Because, well, Chicago innit.

Behold, the breakfast pizza that took 10 minutes to make. Absolutely bloody lovely and by now I was feeling legitimately human again. Wandered up to the gate and sat down, getting moderately concerned that I needed to present myself at the gate because loads of people were showing up, handing over documents, getting stuff looked at or checked or whatever. At one announcement where a load of names were called I went up and said, hey, I’m not one of the people you just mentioned but do you need to look at this or something? A quick glance and a “No, you’re good!” sent me back to the seat.

Boarding is much less of a shitshow than with BA. Pretty much “board the rear rows first, then the middle, then the front”. Albeit Porter do have a frequent flyer programme and they did announce members could board early. Only one person did, a bloke who confidently strode forward with his hand luggage: one laptop bag, two massive pizzas. When I go onboard I discovered he was in seat 2C, ahead of me in 3A. Had to put my own bag next to his two pizzas that were in the above seat storage. 🍕

Much to my delight, I had no-one sat next to me. It’s a prop plane, a small Dash-8 with 2x2 seating and small overhead bins, but plenty of legroom and really quite comfortable seats. Very happy. We pushed back early, took off on time, and had just fantastic views of Chicago as we headed up towards Toronto.

In fact views were brilliant the whole way. We flew right over some enormous city I haven’t bothered to identify. Love seeing cities from above. This never gets old.

Porter, the airline I’m flying, have a slogan or advert I can’t quite recall right now but it’s something like “Why not enjoy flying economy?”. And they’re right, y’know. It was a great flight. Everyone gets free snacks and drinks including alcohol. Disappointed that an airline called Porter doesn’t serve any porters, but a lager will do. I mean, it wasn’t nice, but it was free and so were the crisps. 100% back on form now and having a cracking day.

As we neared Canada the weather got less sunny, more cloudy. Who doesn’t love flying above the clouds?

I’d done my own research, checking out the usual flight path this route takes and picked a seat on the left hand side of the flight with expectations of great views of Toronto city as we approached. Well, I got it wrong - sort of. The weather put paid to me having any decent views on the initial approach, and then when we pulled a U-turn for the final part everyone in a seat F had the great views. Ah well. I did enjoy seeing Tommy Thompson park, at least.

Views from the airport itself, as we taxied, did not disappoint. I had flown into Toronto Billy Bishop airport, which is kinda like London City except way way way better. It’s on an island directly in front of downtown Toronto so you can see this hoofing great pointy building straight away.

We arrived so early that the ground staff weren’t ready for us. I’d stayed seated because meh, never in a hurry to get off a plane. Almost everyone else stood up awkwardly for a good 10 or 12 minutes. Fools. Actually Pizza Guy stayed sat down. He hadn’t eaten any pizza onboard, just carried it off the plane with him as if TRAVELLING INTERNATIONALLY WITH TWO MASSIVE PIZZAS IS A PERFECTLY NORMAL AND REASONABLE THING TO DO. I have so, so many questions.

Crossing the Canadian border involved answering a questionnaire at a kiosk about whether I’m here to commit crimes or smuggle drugs or bring in too much money or whatever. Nope nope nope nope. You get a print out of your answer as well as a truly awful photo, printed on like thermal printer paper like it came from Tasword II on a ZX Spectrum.

Bags were already coming out on the nearest carousel beyond security, and my bag was perfectly located for me to just walk up, grab it, and leave in one seamless move. Hand the printout to another member of staff and away to the city I go. There’s two ways to get to the mainland from here: a ferry, or walk under the tunnel. THIS WAY TO TORONTO. As if it wasn’t obvious.

Up the lift at the other end and the free Porter shuttle bus to Union Station is already waiting, and leaves about 60 seconds after I board it. What an absolutely incredible arrival experience Billy Bishop is! This, people, is why I opted to fly via Chicago. (And because there’s no first class on the direct BA flights to Toronto)

The bus had wifi which was useful, ‘cos I’ve got no roaming data in Canada. Three let me use my home allowance in the states, but in Canada it’s like 6 quid a megabyte. Not having any of that, I’ve bought an eSIM with 5GB of local data on it but the app says only to activate it if the wifi you’re on is stable and I didn’t trust doing it on the bus. So instead I spent the few minutes onboard checking on walking directions from Union to my hotel, committing them to memory.

Except, no, I didn’t, because within 100 yards I took a wrong turn. D’oh! Literally went the wrong side of the tracks, misremembering which side of the railway the Novotel is and finding myself walking through the classic, worldwide “sketchy part of town near the train station” part of town. Ah well. I realised my error and corrected course, though the route was still really unpleasant as first impressions of Toronto were that pretty much every road is being dug up right now. Temporary traffic lights and workmen holding stop/go signs were so unpopular with one driver that there was some serious road rage that a policeman was having to deal with. I thought everyone in Canada was meant to be all polite and stuff?

Made it to the Novotel and checked in, room ready despite being before 3pm. Sad to discover that room 502 was not a Megadeth theme room, also sad to discover the view out of my window was just a derelict multi-storey car park.

Ah well. The room itself is very large with a king size bed and nowhere to store clothing. Odd. There’s a fridge but no mini-bar, a giant Samsung TV, and USB-A and USB-C wall sockets which didn’t provide any power. I got on the wifi, activated my eSIM, and charged my phone for a bit. After an hour or so I headed out to get my bearings.

By which I mean, I went to the brewery less than 200 steps from the hotel door.

Hello, Goose Island! Had a stout, then a tasting flight, fully back into the swing of things. Chatted to Helen back home and realised that, er, somehow it had only been 36 hours since I left the house. How on earth have I done so much in 36 hours!

I had known about this place in advance but the barman at Goose Island told me at least 10 people a day walk in and say hey, they’re staying at the Novotel and saw this place opposite. Our chat was interrupted when he had to serve a couple who walked in and said hey, they’re staying at the Novotel and saw this place opposite.

Had a burger and one more beer, then set off to actually genuinely get my bearings. Walked up the street to where there’s a “historic flatiron building” which is a grotty Firkin pub. Turn right and suddenly I’m at Lawrence Market, which is famous and historic and a bit like Tooting Broadway market except on two floors. Had a nice walk around both but without buying anything.

Really though. Flying with two pizzas?

Back up to near the flatiron firkin, I went into a basement bar called C’Est What? and had a couple more beers. By now it was getting on for 8pm and I was flagging somewhat. It’s quite exhausting, really, all this madcap travelling and drinking. I also needed to be up early the following morning, so getting my head down early felt the right thing to do. Grabbed some soft drinks and a late snack from the mini-market adjacent to the hotel, put the TV on, and crashed out. To sleep, perchance to dream.

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