March 13

Today we pulled into Chicago around 4:00 and walked the long walk back into the station. We shoved our bags into a locker (since we were no longer fancy sleeping car patrons with free baggage storage), found where our boarding gate would be, and headed back out into the city of Chicago. We walked down Jackson Street all the way to the lake, then turned around to find the red line El so we could go to Wrigley and eat in Wrigleyville since our train didn’t leave until 10:00. Turns out this wasn’t as simple a task as we had planned. We saw elevated train tracks and so logically followed them to find our El train. No dice. We found every other color train line but red. After walking around for about an hour we finally found a map in Walgreens—which showed us that the stations we were looking for were where we had already looked. It was a little frustrating. Finally we saw the entrance to the red line ELEVATED train . . . underground.

We got on the SUBWAY to Addison, got off, took a picture of the Wrigley sign, walked around Wrigleyville at bit, then hopped back on the red line back to the city. We didn’t want to risk dinner in Wrigleyville since we wanted to be back at the station by 8:00, so I can’t make any Wrigleyville dining recommendations, but it was a cool area with a lot of options. And bleacher seating on the rooftops. Once again we forgot to take camera pictures, but you can see my mobile photo here.

Then it was back to Union Station and back to coach. When traveling coach as a couple or group I highly recommend getting to the waiting area early (like two hours early) and then getting in the waiting line as soon as it starts. We did it last night and we not only got seats together we got to choose which seats. The train left at 10:00 and we were standing in line at 9:00. Ridiculous but worth it.

We watched four or five episodes of the West Wing and then went to sleep.


Mississippi River.