Ugh! Why does anyone get up at 5:15 am?! It is sooo early! We slept awful because we were so excited, plus staying up til 11:30 watching the country music awards while eating a $5 buck box from Taco Bell wasn’t so smart either. Anyways….we got ready, headed to Tim Horton’s for our breakfast, and then hurried to the Amtrak station. Check in was surprisingly simple and quick. The wait was a while though. The lovely Flint station isn’t like what you picture and see in the movies either. There’s no platform. There’s no friendly conductor with his shiny whistle and fancy uniform waiting to greet you and help you board. You walk outside the ticket building, walk up to a fence next the railroad track and wait. Yup. Then the guy from the ticket booth comes out and opens the gate as if letting a herd of cattle out to pasture, and you wait for the train to pull up. We boarded the train, and took off pretty quickly. Chris and I passed the time by playing Wheel of Fortune on the computer, Boggle, SkipBo and watching a movie.
(....Sorry - the train was shaking)
We were on the train for so long that we ended up making a couple of trips to the snack bar. I was feeling nauteous. I didn’t know if it was because I needed some protein or water, or if I was motion sick. Probably all of it. I went to get some crackers and cheese, but they were sold out, so I ended up with pretzels. That helped, thankfully. We just said that as soon as we dropped off our stuff at the hotel, we were on the hunt for real food! We were supposed to arrive at the station in Chicago at noon, their time, but we didn’t pull in til almost an hour and a half later!
As soon as we hopped off the train, it was sheer madness! It had been a while since I had been to Chicago. I really don’t remember much of it. I figured it’d be like New York, but not as busy. Lots of tall buildings close together, but not as many people and traffic. Boy was I wrong! New York all over again!
(...they had giant flower pots lining the streets with beautiful plants and flowers in them)
(...it didn't take long before an ambulance came whizzing by - lights flashing and sirens screaming. little did we know that that sound would soon be a constant for our duration of the trip and while it was annoying at the time - we would soon get accustomed to the noise)
(...Notice the thick fog. There were probably 20 floors passed the fog.)
Mapquest told us that we were only 1.3 miles from our hotel, so we figured we’d just walk since it was nice out. We didn’t want to pay for a taxi for that short distance. So, we started off with our two 40 lb suitcases, toiletry bag, laptop case, and camera case in tow. An hour later….we arrived at our hotel!
Yes. It took us an hour to walk 1.3 miles because Garmin was apparently confused in the big city and took us on a wild goose chase! All we could do was laugh about it. I mean, what else can you do. We were together, we got to see A LOT of Chicago (although I pictured sight seeing without lugging around a huge suitcase), and we got to start off early with familiarizing ourselves with the city. Guess you could say we killed 2 birds. After we checked into our hotel, we headed up to the 14th floor to our room. Well, we thought we were headed to the 14th floor. We got in, pushed the 14 button, and we started ascending. 11…12…13…14…15…16….wait! We missed 14! We rode all the way up to the 28th floor where a lady got on. Chris pushed the button again thinking maybe he didn’t push it hard enough. Down we went. 17…16…15…14….13…12…uhhh…did it just fly by the 14th floor again?! This time it stopped on the 10th floor. Someone who worked at the hotel got on. We watched him pull out a plastic card, put it through a credit card looking slot, and then push a number button. Hmm….so I ask, “Umm…how do we get to the 14th floor?” The lady who got on the elevator at the 28th floor said, “You have to swipe your room key first. Didn’t they tell you?” Uhh…obviously not! We don’t ride elevators for fun! (Although, it was kind of fun because it was a fast elevator lol) We started laughing at this point and so did she. So, after sliding our room key through the slot, our elevator finally stopped at the 14th floor!
We only spent about 5 minutes riding the elevator up and down with various hotel guests. :)
(...The view from our hotel window)
Chris’s feet were hurting from walking all over town in his flip flops, so he decided to change into his tennis shoes. Umm…”Dear, where are my tennis shoes?” Guess what I forgot to pack…? So….that was our next goal. Find Chris tennis shoes. And we also decided to find me some better flats to wear besides my flip flops. So, we headed out on the search for food, and shoes. We walked and walked and walked all around the city. We finally stopped for lunch. As we were sitting there waiting, we realized that the last time we ate was 10 hours earlier!!!! We were famished!!!! After our lunch (which was really at dinner time), we got a ticket to ride the subway and headed about 8 blocks away to a Puma shoe store that the waitress informed us about.
(...This was soon a popular choice mode of transportation for the week.)
Chris got his shoes, but I was still hunting around. After finally getting some shoes at Sears, we headed back to our hotel to change into jeans and then head to dinner. (By this time about 3.5 hours had passed) We were about 2 or 3 blocks from our hotel when we passed a Puma store. Lol. We spent $5 for a subway ticket so we could go to the other side of the city for a shoe store that was only a couple blocks away from our hotel! Oh well. We got our jeans and headed out for dinner. Later, after we got back to the hotel, I was searching for my black flip flops. I couldn’t find them and then I remembered that I stuck them in the outside pocket of my suitcase. Then, it hit me – That’s where I put Chris’s tennis shoes!!! LOL I unzipped it and sure enough! There they were! Well, Chris now has a brand new pair of Pumas to go with his other two. After a nice dinner at Weber Grill, we hit Walgreens for some cushions for my new shoes, and then back to our hotel to call it a night.
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