Today was fun and stressful. We started out at a wonderful little cafe for breakfast. It was rated very high and we weren't disappointed. It was close by our hotel in Racine. We then headed down to the big city of Chicago. The toll roads are expensive and Tim is tired of paying them. My gps said it was going to take a long time to go a few miles and we soon saw why. Chicago has a real traffic problem. It was the worst we have ever been stuck in and that is saying a lot considering that we have driven in the Bay area in California often. At one point the gps rerouted us because of traffic and it was still bad.
This is the beautiful countryside we passed through.
This is said to be the original McDonald's.
My view from the car.
It started raining about the time we found Navy Pier. As we were looking for parking it really started to downpour. Parking was a flat $25 and with the rain we decided to go find the Sears Tower as it would be inside. Parking by it was $25 also. We drove around the block and found a place on the street that said it was only $4 an hour. What a steal. The only problem was that no one was parked there and that made us nervous, so we drove on. We discovered why no one was parked there. On Fridays it was street cleaning day on that side of the street. We would have been towed! We ended up finding a lot that only cost $8 for 2 hours. It was about 1/4 mile walk from the tower and it was so wet that my feet were slipping and sliding in my sandals. We wanted to go fast as we were worried about the $25 fine if we went over the 2 hours we had paid for. Such a lot of work to have a car in a big city. Next time we'll park somewhere and take a train in. Luckily it wasn't crowded at the tower. It was amazing.
This is the Chicago river.
The Sears Tower is the tallest building in the world. It is 109 stories tall. The elevator only takes 60 seconds to get you to the top. Our ears were popping big time. They have a see through ledge that you can go out on. It was freaky to look down through your feet and see cars that looked like matchbook cars. Really cool. Tim was so nervous to step out there but he did it twice for me. What a stud. You could go look out on all 4 sides and see forever. Because of the rain it wasn't that crowded and we got to take our time. I bought a souvenir replica of the tower.
After we left there we walked around the city a bit. We came upon Union Station. What a wonderful building. So fun to photograph.
We decided to hit the road to find our hotel in a suburb of Chicago called Hoffman Estates. Seriously the most frustrating drive. It was before rush hour yet it was bumper to bumper barely moving congestion. I thought Tim was going to go crazy. We need to get him out of big cities! We got to the hotel and saw a movie theater close by. Some brainless down time sounded good so we ran to the movie San Andreas. It was not the best movie, especially to Tim, but the funniest thing happened while we were there. Alarms started going off and we thought it was part of the movie. Soon a voice said to vacate the theater. It was a huge theater with 30 screens so there were a lot of us leaving. They made us all move away from the building. The police came and then the fire department. The firemen all went in fully uniformed. After about 30 minutes they called us all together and the theater manager said we could go back in and they gave us a free movie coupon. Our movie started up right where it left off. We never found out why we had to vacate.
This is us outside the theater.
We ended up going out for Indian food. It was pretty good.
Our hotel room is nice. We are tired again. How many more days are we doing this?? Our flight we hoped to get on to Atlanta in the morning is now oversold. It had 8 seats this morning. We will have to figure out another one. Then we will find what we want to do in Atlanta and Montgomery.
No comments:
Post a Comment