Saturday 13th May – Chicago

An early alarm for us at 7am, throw some clothes on and grab a bag to walk over to the hotel for a rare breakfast out. It wasn’t too bad – there was scrambled eggs and sausages, fruit, cereal and bread products available, so we grabbed a bite each and a hot drink.

I summoned an Uber which should have been with us well before 8am.  Whether I didn’t request the pick-up location precisely enough or our driver was just insistent on going to the casino we’ll never know.  But we saw our cab head down to the casino in the distance and couldn’t manage to get in touch with him.  Eventually Simon had to walk down to the casino to grab our cab and head back to pick me up.  I got in and said ‘Step on it driver’ – he laughed, but I wasn’t joking.  It was now 8am and the Satnav estimated an 8.15 arrival time at the station for our 8.20 train and we still had to work out what tickets to buy.  Our driver, Stephen, was in no rush but when we pulled up at the station he noticed our train was already at the platform and then advised that we’d better run for it - Helpful! Obviously, it was our first time at this station, so we ran whilst looking out for the ticket office.  We saw a portacabin with a sheet of paper stuck to it advising to buy tickets on the train – excellent.  But as we reached the bottom of the stairs our train to Chicago pulled out.  A tramp on the platform noted our despair as the train had left five minutes earlier than expected.  He advised that the train definitely leaves at 8.15am on weekends, not 8.20am as per our photocopied schedule, and then told us our options – wait for TWO hours for the next cheap train or go across to Amtrak to see if there was another, more expensive option.  We were not going to waste two hours of our day hanging out at the train station so off to Amtrak it was.  Luckily there was an 8.59am train that would get us into Chicago for 10am but would cost us $26 single rather than the $16 it would have cost for weekend passes for on the other line which would have covered our return journey including all public transport in the City.   

Our final point of arrival - Union Station

But nevermind, these things happen, it was just a shame that our helpful hotel didn’t have the up to date schedule!  A less than perfect start to the day, but onwards and upwards….

The Sears/Willis Tower

 …..Up the Willis Tower, to be exact.  This used to be the Sears Tower, which is what many people still refer to it as, but when British Insurance Brokers, the Willis Group, bought a large portion of tower space in 2009 the name changed with their lease.  Whatever you call it, this was the tallest building in the World for nearly 25 years between 1973 and 1998 containing 108 stories at 442.1 metres tall.  Today’s clear sky made it a great opportunity to take in the views and we beat the worst of the queues by getting there reasonably early in the day.   

Above: The North view of the bustling City and our first glimpses of Lake Michigan

The view south-east - parks on the Lake edge

Amazing views like this aren’t enough for tourists these days, apparently we also need an adrenalin rush.  So, now there is the sky deck.  Similar to other vertigo-inducing tourist attractions we have visited, we got the opportunity to stand/ sit on some clear glass with nothing more in between us and the concrete pavement 442.1 metres below (left).

Not wanting to be late for the second time today, we kept an eye on the time as we had to navigate the metro system north to reach our next tourist appointment.  I really enjoyed riding the metro as, unlike the London underground, you are raised up and so get to enjoy views of the city:

View from a moving metro train

We managed to make it to Wrigley Field baseball Stadium with two minutes to spare before our midday tour.  It was a busy tour – there must have been about 50 people in our group for our guide to entertain, the majority of which were clearly massive Cubs fans from their attire.  We admitted straight away that we weren’t exactly experts on the subject of baseball but that Wrigley Field is still an iconic sporting venue to see.  It is the second oldest baseball stadium in the land, having been completed in 1914, though there have been a number of additions and improvements since then.  Our guide was very knowledgeable and entertaining, giving us some useful gems about the place. We got to see the stadium from various different sections of seating including the bleachers (we now know that means benches – the cheap seats), the visitors’ dressing room and the press office.

View from the bleachers

One of the best views in the house - note the seats on the surrounding buildings - the Cubs have bought all these roof-top sites to stop others benefiting from people watching the games from outside the stadium!

View from the press box

Si got a seat in one of the visitors' lockers

The Visitors dressing room, (left) despite smelling mildly of sweaty feet, has housed numerous sporting greats not only from baseball but also American Football and hockey and even some of the World’s most famous musicians – Sir Paul McCartney, Elton John, the Foo Fighters and Billy Joel to name a few. 

The tour ended with a visit to the side of the pitch and the Cubs’ dug-out:

Some famous baseball behinds have sat in those seats

The last question we asked our guide was advice on the best place to go for an Italian beef sandwich for my continued quest through the States’ top ten. We headed five blocks down the road to Al’s, as per our guide’s advice.  We shared a large which came in a white sub roll but we were a little underwhelmed by it.  Yes, the beef was very tender and juicy but that was all you could taste, even though they added cheese.  So, it was sadly a little bland and scored a mediocre 6/10. 

But it gave us the energy required to jump back on the metro and head south back into the city to find the pick-up point for our crime tour at 4pm.  

 

We boarded a crammed-full limousine bus with very comfy leather seats.  Experiencing the traffic in the City we were relieved to have not brought the RV into the madness! But the traffic jams gave our guide, Ben, time to tell us a tale relevant to the location we were attempting to reach.  Our first stop – the Biograph Theatre (left) -  the location of the shoot-out which led to the death of notorious bank robber John Dillinger in July 1934 after his land-lady tipped off ‘the Feds’. Having seen Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger, we recognised the location and got some snaps, including the alleyway where he breathed his last. 

The alleyway where Dillinger died

Back on the bus we were told about crimes and gangsters, both new and old, but I have to admit to losing some focus as my friendly migraine made a re-visit.  But it was a good way to get to see more of the City and stop in some famous locations. 

One of these was a Harry Caray’s restaurant.  Harry was a baseball sports caster with special links to our earlier stop at Wrigley Field, where he spent 16 years as the announcer for the Cubs. The basement of the restaurant we stopped at has original press cuttings on the wall relating to some of the most famous gangster-related incidents in Chicago’s history as well as containing some more hidden tunnels used during the prohibition era.  My favourite fact from the tour was that, despite it being prohibition, there were actually three times more places could grab a drink back then than there are now – almost 15,000 speak-easys in the City against the current 4500  bars!!

Original press cutting about machine gun Kelly

Gap behind railings into hidden tunnels

The tour lasted almost two hours and then it was time to locate another Chicago cuisine favourite for dinner – deep dish pizza.  Completely failing to appreciate just how deep these pizzas are we ordered our normal ‘large’ to share at an Uno’s restaurant.   

Embarrassingly, we only managed two slices each, leaving us another half a pizza to take away in a very large box!  Despite drinking gallons of water and taking some pain killers I could not shift my headache again so we started making our way to La Salle station to try to catch the cheaper train back to Joliet.  Our good deed for the day was handing our left-over pizza box to someone far more needy than us – a guy going through the bins for scraps at the metro station won and was very grateful, sending us on with his blessing.  We got our third train tickets of the day for the slowest imaginable train ride back to Joliet, rolling in at 10pm after it had stopped everywhere.  It was like being back on the vomit-comet (last train home on a weekend night!) from London Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria. With a headache.  Another Uber back to the RV park and we felt like we had well and truly done Chicago and really enjoyed the City.

You may have noticed that we had quite a jam-packed day.  We had thrown caution to the wind and seen pretty much everything that we wanted to and this was reflected in our spending.  Thanks to the transport complications and buying half a pizza we didn’t need, on top of three tourist attractions and the obligatory shot glass souvenir we had blitzed our way through over $300.  In one day!  What budget? Exactly.

I was so glad to get back home (as I call the RV these days), take some pills and collapse into bed