We took an $8 Lyft ride to the nearby Rosemont CTA blue line metro station, and took it into the city for $5 — instead of taking a $48 Lyft ride directly down there.
We got off the blue line at the Jackson Station, where we saw this Flamingo by Alexander Calder, an iconic, towering piece of bright red public art.
We walked around “willy-nilly” since we hadn’t done any planning. At one point, we may have ducked into a Barnes & Noble, looked in their “Local” section, and snapped a picture of this map instead of purchasing the $10 book it was in:
We walked around the theater district:
We walked along the Chicago River Riverwalk:
And saw these sights:
Down by the Navy Pier, we sat and just enjoyed this view of Lake Michigan:
All while we were walking around, I was looking for a place to enjoy a Chicago-style hot dog. We finally found one at Gordon Ramsay’s Burger.
Two things: 1) As much as I wanted one of these hot dogs, I don’t like mustard and dill pickles, so there was that. And 2) In the restroom in this restaurant, I encountered one of the worst affordances on a hand dryer:
The issue with it was that the blower that dries your hand was facing horizontally (at you) instead of vertically (down to the floor), which of course when you started, blew all of the water on your hands onto your body instead of down to the floor.
For posterity (in addition to being an outrageous sign of our times), our 2 hot dogs and 2 order of fries (with 2 “free” waters) came to $48 — $40 with an $8 tip!
A few other interesting sites we saw included this clump of buildings, these old-fashioned camera store signs that Bob loved, the Palmer House Hotel, the Weber Grill Restaurant, and the “Chicago Picasso”:
And finally, before heading back to our hotel, we took the blue line down two more stops to Clinton station, which upon exiting is a two-block walk to Union Station, where we’ll catch the Amtrak Southwest Chief, which is the whole reason we’re here.
While we were in the station, we went ahead and got printed tickets from our e-ticket, and in the line, there was a person in front of us with obvious mental illness. He had an emotional support dog with him (who actually looked scared) and he kept talking to him in non-stop conversation about ways he’d (the person, not the dog) been wronged.
I was next in line behind him, and I kept my back to him facing Bob so as not to be drawn into his ramblings. When he got up to the desk person, he started ranting about some guy in a red cap that had done something to him and how he’d now spent $4000 on his trip. He was banging on the counter, and the poor clerk was looking at him with alarm.
At one point, the counter guy called someone on the phone, and shortly after that a woman came out who looked like she might have been his manager or boss, and then shortly after that 4 or 5 security people arrived to escort the rambling man away.
After getting our printed tickets, we took the CTA Blue Line back to our hotel
and we had cocktails and ate some of our plan-ahead (a.k.a. “leftover”) Chicago-style pizza.
Did you see the “Bean”? The big bean-shaped mirrored sculpture??
We did not. We were kind of disorganized when we walked around down there, and I was focused on finding a place that sold Chicago-style hot dogs. 😂