Holiday to Pacific West Coast in Jun 2012: Day 29 – Seattle to Chicago

By Nige on July 2, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Type: Post
Story: Holiday to Pacific West Coast in Jun 2012 Category: Travel
Tags: Chicago | Hilton | Navy Pier | Seattle | Starbucks

Bad night’s sleep.  It was never going to be a good one since the alarm was set for 3am, but I woke at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep, and Vick struggled for most of the night anyway.  So we were on our way to the airport a little ahead of schedule.

We were checked in just as the security checks opened up.  By the time we were through we still had 30 mins before any of the coffee shops were open.  Managed to get a Starbucks in prior to boarding at 5:30am.  We were in the air by 6:15am and we arrived 15 mins ahead of schedule in Chicago around 11:30am (local time).  The flight attendant was well chuffed announcing that we had arrived 15 mins ahead of schedule.  And when we got off the plane was it hot!  Wow, and humid with it.

We got a taxi to the hotel which looked very palatial downstairs.  We were upgraded to a junior suite and we had access to the executive floor.  The room was huge but it was outdated and a little dingy.  We checked out the executive floor later on, and there was nothing sparkling to talk about.  We did get some good advice about restuarants from the concierge up there though.

For the first time one of us lost something!  My phone slipped out of my pocket whilst getting out of the taxi, so at checkin my phone was gone and I was fearing the worst.  Luckily I managed to ring the taxi firm, I had remembered the taxi cab id (Rav was in cab number 1125), and he found the phone.  We then arranged for him to pop in, drop it at the front desk and I would leave him a reward in an envelope.

All the best laid plans eh?  So he turned up, but no one at the front desk knew anything about our arrangement – communication across the front desk team across the various shifts clearly wasn’t good, so I wasn’t happy!

In the afternoon we wandered out onto the streets and took in sights.  The temperature and the humidity was overbearing – completely different to Vegas.  Vegas was a lot hotter but less humid and that made it so much more bearable.  We had started to sweat almost immediately on the streets of Chicago.

We decided that we needed an ice cream to tied us over between a make shift breakfast and our expected later afternoon lunch/dinner.  After connecting into Starbucks wifi we sought out the local Ben & Jerry’s.  Although it proved to be further away than we thought!

We finally arrived at Navy Pier and got our ice creams.  We picked up a taxi for a trip back to the hotel and we decided where to head out for dinner, although it took a while and we ae becoming fairly indecisive in the latter part of our holiday.

The Italian Village was our restaurant of choice for the evening.  It was a recommendation from our concierge and the food was very good. Vick will add in some detail here.  Yes it was okay but not the best Italian ever – that was in Vancouver.  Nige’s lasagne was SO salty, but we’re getting used to that in the US – everything is laden with salt, sugar, fat or all three.  No wonder they are SO huge.  It’s frightening.

We headed back and spotted a place on the street for dinner tomorrow.  Then it was Bachelorette for the next 2 hours.

Stats for Day 29: 0 miles.

Plan for tomorrow is to go for our Segway tour which we are both looking forward to.

Holiday to Pacific West Coast in Jun 2012