Sight seeing - Do I have to?

BRUTALITY FACTORS: Medium

You might be wondering why I am against sight seeing. Well I would definitely love to do it, as long as its not where I live. My friends are very excited when they plan to come down to Chicago. Trust me, I am too. But, the minute we decide to go for the city tours. I have to drag myself out like a four year old kid.

Its only because of my friends that I end up going. If it was some third person, I would just send him off in a train and let him figure out the place by himself. The very first in the list is Sears Towers. I still can't forget the time, when I had to go there during a long weekend. As I expected, the whole of US was there at the entrance and, it took us three hours to get done with it. I could have cimbed up and down the building faster. The line at the observatory floor circled around twice, for the elevator.

And there were no shortcuts. You had to watch the insanely long boring documentary where, they always seem to compare the length of materials with the distance between the moon and earth. Like, "The phone cables used in the building can go all the way up to the moon and back". I mean, who cares. I would know a cable which is 10,000 miles long, is really really long. I don't want them to get the solar system into the picture to justify it.

Once my friend wanted to go to Sears, when it was cloudy. They had a warning saying, the visibility was zero. From the bottom, I couldn't see more than 1/3rd of the building. I tried explaining it to my friend. But he never agreed. Thanks to the principle, "If you are in Chicago, you 'have' to go to Sears". It does make sense. You would definitely go to Eiffel Tower if you are in Paris, right? So we went up 110 storeys, saw a beautiful gray wall, took pictures of it and came back. "I have the exact same wall in my rest room", I told him. I got beaten up for that. 

Next on the list is, the boat cruise. I just hate this one from the bottom of my heart. They are expensive to begin with and you are stuck in the boat for three hours. Pick a movie you think is very OK, and imagine going to the theater to watch it at least 5 times a year, for 6 years. Its a similar experience. The location is the same, actors are the same and the script is the same. Only the audience is different. The Tour guide hasn't changed his script nor his job. He repeats the same jokes and I know them by heart now. Though its fun to tell your friends the joke just the minute before he does, and laugh harder after he does. I just make the best of it and have a nice 3 hour nap. 

People in smaller towns don't have to go through this trouble. Because, no one would want to come there anyways. I was, for some time living in a town which had fewer people than the candidates in last nights Presidential debate. I was asking my parents to come. They agreed only when I told them Chicago was nearby.

Everything else about sight seeing is good in Chicago and has the best skyline, according to people who have come here. I can never get sick of them. I guess it's the wait line for the Sears, and the time involved for the boat cruise which aggravates me. 

I guess next time I'll just take my friends to the John Hancock building, which is a Sears Towers wannabe and will just rent a boat in which I will be the tour guide. I know the tour guides script remember?