Chicago...and all that jazz...

Day 24, Feb 26th

Awoke this morning to a very white outlook. It has been a few days since we made our way from the snow of the far north of the USA to the humidity and pleasant warmth of the deep south...

I slept reasonably well in the coffin Superliner upper bunk. Maybe it was the bottle of red, but I slept thru what was an abbreviated breakfast serving time due to a 9am arrival in Chicago. It was about 8am when I dragged myself down from the top bunk and got dressed in my shorts and T-shirt that I boarded with in New Orleans. I had to go looking for William the SCA to ask him to make up our room so we could get our stuff together for arrival in Chicago. William made our room up in a few minutes and we prepared for arrival, which was about 15 mins early at 8:45.

Upon arrival in Chicago, we all alighted and headed for the baggage claim which was in a room with two conveyors, airport style. I was walking off the platform in subzero temperatures, snow falling all around in the uncovered areas, with my shorts and T-shirt...lol I had anticipated I may get caught out, but I was prepared to wear the pain of a few minutes of cold then lug coats around in New Orleans and clutter up the bedroom. Needless to say, when the bags appeared, all of them, it was with much relief that I grabbed a jacket which I had placed on the top of the bag.

We jumped a taxi to the hotel, the W Chicago - City Centre. It was not much after 9:30am, so we were hoping we could check-in. It wasn't a problem and soon enough we were in a room on the 20th floor, no view, but a huge king room with a giant bathroom. It is very modern and although the building is aged, they have recently renovated in the 'W' style with lots of little quirks. These are pics of the bedding and the unusual front reception where we checked in...

After we settled in and freshened up with a shower, we rugged up and went in search of a city tour. It was snowing, quite heavily at times, so we ruled out trying to go to the skydeck of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) as visibilty would be extremely limited at best. We found out the hop on, hop off trolleys left from opposite the Willis Tower which is only a block from where we are staying. On the way we decided to have an early lunch because we skipped breakfast on the train. We ended up going back to Giordano's again, but I gave the deep dish pizza a miss and settled for the Philadelphia Beef Sandwich, a monster sandwich with massive amounts of sliced beef, onions, peppers and melted cheese. Diane had soup and pasta.

We left Giordano's and walked half a block to the trolley stop where we paid for the tour. There was a double decker open top bus just about to go, but the bottom was chockers and the top was getting dumped on by snow. We decided to wait for the next trolley in a trolley bus that is parked at the stop as a waiting/warming room. I took this picture of the grass and garden of the office block adjacent to the stop, very pretty...

We did the trolley tour which allows you to hop on or off at any of 15 stops around the city, but given the weather, we were happy to just travel the loop, which took over 2 hours. Unfortunately the windows were quite dirty on the outside and very fogged up on the inside, so any photography was out of the question. We finished the tour where we started and made our way back to the hotel via Starbucks for coffee. I was approached at least 3 times on the way back by beggars claiming to be homeless. I was a bit surprised to be honest that homelessness was such a big problem here given it is so cold. I may be naive to think that they migrate south for the winter, but I can't see how anybody can survive the harsh winters here without a roof over their head. It wasn't a problem that I saw in Boston which has a similar weather history, maybe I was just lucky in Boston.

After relaxing in our room for a few hours, we headed back out for a big Saturday night out in Chicago town. I had a bag of washing under my arm and we headed for a laundramat I had searched up on the net. A taxi drove us there, we put the clothes in the washing machine (cost = 14 quarters = $3.50) with some washing detergent (cost = 75c a box x 2 boxes = $1.50). They told us it would take 30 minutes so we left to look to grab a bite to eat. We turned the corner and came across this tiny little chinese restaurant. We just grabbed a large short soup each and a combination appetiser to share + a couple of diet pepsi's and got change from $20.

I went back to the laundry after 30 mins and transferred the clothes into these giant commercial tumble dryers, all complimentary for clothes washed at the laundry. I went back to the restaurant to finish my meal and then Diane and I walked back to collect and fold the clothing. We needed to run a few things thru the dryer a second time and it was at that stage that I noticed that they had unusual instructions on the dryer. Have they really had this problem in the past?...

We grabbed a taxi back to our hotel and by 9pm we were safely tucked away in the room for the evening. The train for Reno leaves at 2pm tomorrow, so I have received a late checkout at 1pm. The plan for the morning will be determined by the weather, if the visibility is OK, we will go to the top of the tower, but if it is a bit like today, we will probably rug up and take a walk to Millennium Park which is just a few blocks from the hotel.

We'll be on the train for 2 days from tomorrow, so the next update probably won't come until we get to Lake Tahoe.

Later...