Chicago, Day 2

Our second day in Chicago began with a trip in to the city on the Blue Line, via a bus that mercifully stopped within a few steps of our hotel's parking lot. We stopped off at Union Station to set our bags down in their lockers, which were a rather exorbitant $9 for the day, and had breakfast (cereal!) in Union Station's fabulous Great Hall. At breakfast, I realized that I had lost my sunglasses. We went back to Aurelio's to see if I'd lost them, but this turned out to be fruitless. I'm still sorting through the photos to find exactly where I left them.

Building on our great success in Seattle, we decided to visit the Harold Washington Library- the largest public library building in the world. Aside from the fantastic size of it all, it was worth the trip for what we found. On the upper floors of the library is a "winter garden"- a green space with tables and chairs for the public to enjoy, all sitting in a comfortable, climate-controlled dome. I assume that this is meant to assist Chicagoans in coping with the harsh local winters. The effect is much like sitting in the plaza of a city park, except that you're 9 stories up in the middle of downtown Chicago.

Off of the garden are several historical exhibits. One of the galleries is focused on the life of the man whom the building is named after- Harold Washington, the first black Mayor of Chicago. The library's current location was one of his great projects as Mayor, and one that he would not live to see completed.

In the next gallery was part of the Chicago Public Library's extensive collection of Civil War artifacts, including a saddle used by none other than General Ulysses Grant. As always, there are serendipitous surprises to be found in all of the nooks and crannies of places- and often they're free.

After the library, we visited the newly-renovated Millenium Park. There are several things to be seen here, including "The Bean"-- formally the Cloud Gate, a large metal sculpture that looks a bit like a very chrome lima bean.

Dani found The Bean useful for photographic tricks.

Afterwards, we visited the Crown Fountain, a large sculpture fountain in the park. On this particular hot summer day, the fountain was teeming with Chicagoans of all sorts enjoying the water, which was "spit" from nozzles in the side of 50-foot towers. The towers themselves were decorated with a rotating series of faces, with the mouths of the faces at the nozzles.

My impression of the fountain was that it is a prime example of good public space-- both artistic and functional, and highly appreciated by the folks there. The air was full of the sound of people just having a good time, which is what a city park ought to do.

Afterwards, we headed across the park towards the waterfront and the famous Buckingham Fountain. Along the way, we encountered the Taste of Chicago festival-- which was good, as we were hungry-- but then we encountered the Taste of Chicago festival's price list. Suffice to say that we kept walking towards the fountain.

While Buckingham Fountain is obviously a work of art, it's a work of art somewhat unlike Crown Fountain. It's fenced off and offered no respite from the muggy heat that plagued the city in July. I'm told that there are water and light shows at the fountain, but we weren't there for either. Still hungry, we kept walking towards the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, as when I had last visited the city with my family there was a hot dog cart in front of the museum.

Sadly, the hot dog cart wasn't there. I brought down this beast, but as you can see it was all bones.

By this time, it was three in the afternoon and we were both hungry and a very long walk from the nearest CTA stop. So we turned to our smartphones for help. We found City Dogs in the Loop, and hiked back out to the Red Line for a trip inbound. Once there, we found that there are a lot of things to do to a hot dog beyond the usual ketchup.

It was delicious!

We rounded out our time in Chicago with a trip around on the CTA, followed by a ride out to Lincoln Park and a walk along the waterfront.

The waterfront trail links all of the parks along Chicago's lakeshore, and it was clearly very popular. Among the most interesting features I saw was this pavilion, where several people were sitting around playing chess. The boards were built in to the benches.

With Chicago (or at least its waterfront) thoroughly explored, we made our way back to Union Station and the Lakeshore Limited to Niagara Falls.

Chicago, Day 1

Our first day in Chicago began with a trip to Union Station to try and disentangle the mess that was our reservation. After the first re-route, Amtrak lifted the segment limitation on our pass, making it possible for an apparently unlimited number of reservations to be associated with it. In the extensive re-booking that followed our second re-route and subsequent emergency airlift, we had reservations lingering from both, and the routing that remained would have required us to be in at least two places at once, if not three. We walked up to the ticket counter in Chicago, and the agent we spoke to visibly cringed.

After the cringing, he was the most helpful Amtrak employee we had yet encountered. He cleaned up our booking entry, got us back on track, and managed to get us aboard the Lakeshore Limited on 1 July. This was still a day behind schedule, sticking us in Chicago for an extra day and causing us to miss Canada Day in Niagara Falls, but it was certainly better than I'd gotten on the phone. I'd also already made plans for transportation to Toronto based on leaving on that train, so all we needed to take care of was a last-minute hotel in Chicago. A quick click on Hotwire (and the judicious coincidence of my paycheck being deposited a few days early) and we were on our way.

After doing pretty well at our game of ticket poker, we headed out in search of Chicago pizza. A friend on Facebook recommended Aurelio's, and his recommendation was excellent. It turns out that there is an Aurelio's just around the corner from Union Station. (Of course, we didn't figure that out when we left Union Station. Of course not! We thought about going back to our hotel to leave our bags, then decided better of it once we were downtown. We mailed back our first pack of memorabilia at the post office, THEN looked up Aurelio's, and had to backtrack.) They had a $10 pizza-and-pasta lunch buffet, and after weeks of PB&J sandwiches we were eager for as much pizza as we could stuff ourselves with. The pizza didn't look all that great, considering its location under a heat lamp, but looks can be deceiving. One bite confirmed that this was indeed excellent pizza. (For the curious, it was the Chicago-style thin crust, not deep dish- which, I expect, cannot be held under a heat lamp for long.) I pass on the recommendation to any heading to Chicago, with the caveat that locals might know better than I. Thanks, Dana, for the tip!

We then set out trying to follow an itinerary from WikiTravel, but it turned out that the author's travel plans didn't exactly coincide with mine. We set out to see Chicago's Michigan Avenue, also known as the Magnificent Mile. Once we got there, however, we found out that the Mile is magnificently expensive- it's Chicago's primary commercial strip, populated by high-end department stores and boutiques. We did dig the Old Water Tower and nearby pumping station and firehouse, the first two of which survived the Great Chicago Fire, but the remaining occupants of the Magnificent Mile did not appear so magnificent to us. Therefore, we went elsewhere.

A quick walk east (and an astounding realization, on my part, that the water was now to the east, rather than its proper location in the west) took us to Lake Michigan, which we then proceeded to swim in. The cool water was refreshing in the muggy heat of the day, and it was fresh water despite its extension beyond the horizon. (Salt water always bugs me a bit, leaving a crusty impression on my skin after I'm done swimming.) We spent a bit of time splashing about and comparing notes on the local wildlife, which was out displaying an impressive array of colored plumage.

After our swim, Dani was feeling in need of a respite from the continuous city-walking that we'd been engaging in. We wandered back to Michigan Avenue and caught a bus headed for Union Station. We also were under the impression that we had to leave the city quite early in order to make it to our suburban (and inexpensive) hotel for the evening, so we got on a blue line train heading for Forest Park, connecting to one of the CTA's rare #17 buses. After the end of that ride, we had a mile-and-a-half walk to our hotel. Neither one of us were happy about it, but Hotwire hides the actual name and address of a hotel from you until you pay for and book your stay. (In return for accepting this limitation, you get insanely cheap rates. In most cases, we stayed for 50% or less of the room's posted rate. In this case, it was cheaper than hostel beds for the two of us.) We walked, weary, packs on, across suburban wasteland, pausing only for water and a bit of grocery shopping at a Super Target. We finally reached the Hillside Extended StayAmerica, checked in and tried to spend the evening relaxing.

Of course, fate would not allow us such a luxury. The air conditioning in our room didn't work. A quick call to the front desk informed me that, no, a maintenance person was not available on site, and that the desk clerk's promises to "call right back" were empty. We didn't receive a call for the duration of our stay. Plan B- a cool shower and opening every window in the place- worked passably well. I also then logged on to the Internet to discover that Pace, Chicago's suburban bus agency, is not on Google Transit- and that a quick perusal of their schedules would have brought us directly in front of our hotel, with buses running half-hourly up until midnight! At least we discovered this before the mile-and-a-half walk back to the #17 bus. With that, we ended our first day in Chicago.