Visa Appointment

I'm a bit late in writing this, but I had my visa appointment in Chicago on Aug 8. Ryan and I took off of work Thursday and drove to Chicago, since plane tickets jumped up from $200/person round trip to over $500/person. We stopped at the Acoustic Café in Menomonie, WI which had delicious food and drinks. We had a veggie and cheese Panini with the house special sauce, and I had a chocolate raspberry iced drink and Ryan had a strawberry banana smoothie. Yum!

I booked a hotel room for that night at a super 8 hotel right outside of Chicago for $40... which made me figure it would be crappy, but oh man it was worse than I thought. It had suspicious shiny stains on the floor and a mirror centered in front of the bed instead of the TV. I never took my flip flops off when walking on the carpet. Eew.

We went to my appointment at the consulate, which I was expecting to be an interview with someone in a separate room. It was actually like a DMV, with a plain room with white walls and a bunch of chairs to wait in, and walk up windows with plexiglass. It took less than five minutes for me to turn in my documents and for the man to tell me I'll receive my visa in the mail in 4-5 weeks.

After that, Ryan and I decided to go get something to eat and went to Lou Malnati's and got a deep dish pizza. However, since parking was insanely expensive, it ended up being a $60 pizza. About $30 for the actual pizza and another $30 for parking for an hour and a half. Ridiculous. So, rather than pay even more for parking so we could wander around, we went right home after that. On the way home, while in Wisconson, we passed a massive fire on the side of the road. It looked like an apartment building under construction, but I'm not sure if that's what it actually was.

We got home around midnight, Friday night. Not a too terribly expensive trip, though driving nine hours each way was tiring.