Day 3: The Windy City (7/14/2010)

Today, we woke up in Missouri. Davin slept better last night, but I slept worse. The upper bed rocked like crazy!! We skipped breakfast again. Who wants to eat at 6-8am anyway?? We made a reservation for a twelve o’ clock lunch. Davin finished watching a movie in the Roomette that he had started last night. Meanwhile, I went to the observation deck to watch the scenery go by for an hour before lunch. The scenery today is very green. Obviously it’s a lot wetter here up north. The coolest thing I saw was when we crossed over the Mississippi river. I took some pictures of that.

We arrived in Chicago at around 3pm, and had a layover until 9:30pm. So, Davin and I left our bags with the Redcap in the Metropolitan lounge (free when you book a Sleeper room), and set off to explore downtown Chicago. I was really impressed with the architecture of the city. Davin and I liked it a lot. We compared our impressions of Chicago to our impressions of San Francisco. We were not particularly impressed with that other famous city. I especially loved all the fire escapes that were like black lattices propped against all the old buildings. It sure would be terrifying to have to use one of those! Though, I suppose it would be preferable to burning up in a building...

Davin and I made our way to the shores of Lake Michigan. From there, we went south ‘til we came to the Museum area of town. At this point, we were both concerned about getting sunburned. The sun was beating down, and the humidity was quite high. The temperature wasn’t too bad because a constant wind cooled us off. I guess they don’t call Chicago ‘the windy city’ for nothing! The sun was still a threat however, so we chose to go to the Shedd Aquarium. We lucked out, because it turned out there was a ‘Wednesday Only Special Event’ of live Jazz music in the aquarium, after hours, and all for a reduced admission price ($18 instead of $30 per person)! The aquarium was really impressive, and had some really interesting displays. We didn’t have time to read everything though, so we mostly just enjoyed looking at all the different fish and animals.


Around 7 pm, we headed back to the train station. On the way back, we purchased a hot dog from a hot dog stand. Our first ever hot dog stand purchase! I liked it, because the umbrellas at the stand were the same colors as the umbrellas at the hot dog stands in Grand Theft Auto 4. Though, of course, that game takes place in New York (Liberty City), not in Chicago. So, we will have to find another hot dog stand to eat at once we get to New York.

Back at the train station’s Metropolitan lounge, I was able to check my email with the free wireless internet. Then, we boarded the train around 9 pm. This train, unlike the last one, didn’t have a luggage rack on each car for oversized baggage. This caused some problems, as we had too many bags to fit in our little Roomette. Thankfully, many other people were having the same problem, so our aide generously stored some of our baggage elsewhere in the train. First though, he hinted strongly at us that this was not something he was supposed to do, and that we owed him a large tip tomorrow as a result.

In the process of trying to frantically drag our huge, heavy bags onto the train through the narrow corridors, I somehow misplaced our tickets. So, then I had to frantically find them again before the conductor forced us to pay for our room all over again!! I did find them at the last second, though! God, what a company, to charge you AGAIN for a room you rightly paid for, if you simply lose a paper ticket. You know they must have your name on record, and be able to verify your identity by ID instead. Amtrak lost points with me there.

The Roomette on this train is a little bigger than the last one we were in, especially my upper berth bed. I can at least sit up on the bed and use my computer. The clearance was too small for that, on the other train.

Anyway, it’s late now that we passed into Eastern time, so I’m going to go to bed. Today was a lot of fun. Tomorrow we finally get to the other side of the country and reach New York!