USA Rail Journey: Day 2 — Chicago
The train reached 3 hours late. As I walked out of the platform in to the station, I saw this welcome board.
Chicago Union Station is quite beautiful. It is shown in quite a few movies. I took a self-guided tour of the station and took a couple of pictures. Google instantly asked me to review the Chicago station and even gave me stylized version of the pic I had taken 5 minutes ago. Google, sometimes, creeps me out.
Chicago is a nice place. It is neither as big as New York City nor is a small town. Also, the public transportation is very good. The downtown is well connected and you can always find a CTA (local train) station in walking distance. I took a day’s pass and went on to explore the city.
My first destination was Millennium Park. This 1-mile radius has all the attractions of Chicago. I went to the Chicago Bean (Cloud Gate). This is like Statue of Liberty of Chicago. Unless you take a pic here, it is hard to convince people you had been to Chicago.
As I was walking around the Millennium Park, I stumbled upon the famed Art Institute of Chicago. This is supposed to be one of the best museums. At least, their front door brags about it.
The beautiful part of the Chicago is the river that flows in between the city and joins Lake Michigan. The walk on the riverside was relaxing.
For dinner, I had the famous Chicago styled stuffed pizza at the Giordano’s.
Today, I went to the Buckingham Fountain. Google notified me about this place today morning. It is supposedly one of the largest fountains in the world and is considered Chicago’s front door.
I loafed around the downtown before heading back to Union Station. My next train to Omaha departs in 15 minutes.
