Chicago

Mostly photos in this one.

In hindsight, I maybe could have spent more time in Anderson, making a slightly longer weekend of it, but I didn’t think of that until far too late. This is the downside of a plan which was sort of bodged together as events changed & kept changing.

Had an evening flight, because if I’m going to be relying on other people for a ride to the airport, I’ll make sure that it’s as easy as possible for them. Indianapolis is an excellent choice of airports to potentially spend hours hanging out in, because there’s a bunch of stuff land-side, plus even more air-side.

I didn’t bother, or maybe wasn’t willing, to book a specific seat for a one hour flight. Got an aisle assigned to me, but nobody had the window or middle, so I got a window seat and some clear skies for the first & last parts of the trip.

The hotel … Is adequate?

There’s nothing wrong with or bad about the hotel parts of their operation; The room is fine, everything works, and they’re near O’Hare with a regular airport shuttle.

However;

• Coffee machine in the room, but no coffee cups. This was the case the last time I stayed too.
• Last time I used the plastic water cups from the bathroom, but this time there weren’t any of those either.
• I thought the coffee last time tasting awful was because of the plastic cups, or because I overfilled the water tank of Mr. Coffee and flooded the little tray it was in.
• Snagged a cup from the lobby this time. The awful coffee taste cannot be blamed on the cups or the flooding; They’re innocent in all of this.

Much better coffee was available at the Dunkin’ ( when did they drop the ‘Donuts’ part of their name? ) at a gas station down the street

I was here for two nights, so I took the shuttle back to the airport the next day, then the metro rail into the city. ( Turns out that a day pass is the same price as a single fare from the airport, which simplified things )

Mostly I just wandered around; Wandered up Magnificent Mile until I hit the shoreline, then down said shoreline until I hit the Navy Pier area. Eventually, in the fullness of time, I decided I’d had enough wandering around, so headed back to the airport & took the shuttle back to the hotel.

I had some trouble finding that shuttle back in June, but it was much easier this time. Their instructions sort of make sense if you already know a lot about O’Hare, so not all that good for a traveller.