Day 6 (Returning to Mn): Chicago, Ill, M's first time!

As we got closer to Chicago, I realised we had time to play and I had promised M on several occassions that we would go to Chicago.This seemed like a good time to honor my promise. Chicago would be the 2nd of the really large cities that M would see this year (see Washington DC travel journal). I decided, and M excitedly endorsed the decision, that we would visit Chicago.

Driving around Chicago and into Chicago was unusually and particularly scary for me. I had on Saturday, again, driven through massive rainstorms and thunderstorms on roads I did not know. I took turns that were not on the map and I did not know from hour to hour, city to city, what our route was to be (though I had a general outline).  I adjusted my trip plan each time I stopped for gas, food, and/or a stretch break. 

I was tired and in my aging process I am keenly aware that I do not process all visual and audio stimuli as rapidly and smoothly as I used to, particularly when I am driving,  and that my eye-hand coordination is considerably slower than it was a few years ago. And I drive in rural Minnesota where you may have an occassional driver pass you going a few miles over the speed limit, but not 1000+ cars/trucks going 20+ miles over the limit (this is what my imagination assumes the German audobahns are like) and drivers who knew which lane to be in for the multiple toll lanes that arrived after traffic narrowed from 4-6 lanes to 2-4  and only then would I finally see signs that made me say, "Shoot! (Except my specific word choice was a bit spicier!) I have to be in the right lane for drivers with cash and I am in the far left lane and its only a few hundred yards away and the traffic is thick as a plague of bugs around me all going at different speeds. HELP!" I wonder, could this become the 'image' for swarm theory as applied to inanimiate objects such as moving cars?

As usual, we did not have hotel reservations. I wanted a hotel near a train stop so we could take the metro into the city. I stopped at one hotel near the hospital and University section of Chicago (I think). No vacancy, but as I was leaving the doorman raced to my car to give me a list of possible hotels near O'Hare airport and his personal recommendations. 

I called  several hotels on the list (this was one of those times when I know that cell phones were meant to become a life necessity). All were full. Finally, I made reservations at the Holiday Inn Express, on Mannheim Ave in Rosemount, Ill. According the reservations clerk, "It's easy to find and get to". Famous last words and, most certainly, NOT TRUE. Miles later and another phone call later, the reservations clerk impatiently attempted to give me  'better' directions while insisting that I could not possibly have missed the sign for Mannheim North on the interstate. Why do all people who give directions assume EVERYONE can see ALL signs and, if they do, that they can grasp the 'information' on these signs as they are zipping by at speeds that defy gravity with traffic to the left and traffic to the right blocking the view of ANY and ALL signs?

Finally, we found the hotel, checked in, and decided it was too late to take the hotel shuttle to the airport to catch a train to get off in some yet to be determined place in the dark in downtown Chicago around 9:00 p.m. only to have to figure out what time we had to leave downtown Chicago to repeat the return journey in time to catch the last shuttle from the airport to the hotel. It's tiring just describing it.

To my dismay, I learned later that we missed the Venetian night festivities and the fireworks at 10:30 at the Navy Pier. Instead, we rested. I swam in the pool until it became too heavily infested with little ones; then I finished off the pizza we had ordered the night before and had brought with us.

Next morning, Sunday, I decided and the Desk Attendant agreed with me that I could realistically drive into downtown Chicago. So I did.  I have driven in Atlanta, Ga., around/through Washington DC/Baltimore and around/through New York City, on a few occassions, but NEVER Lakeshore Drive in downtown  Chicago. How can anyone drive safely while gawking at the same time?

We found parking at the Navy Pier with minimal effort. We took the HOP ON/HOP OFF DOUBLE DECKER with OPEN DECK  tour (Dos and Don'ts: don't take the trolley; do sit about midways on the upper deck; don't sit in the front 2 sets of seats as the front window and braces block your view) leaving it only to enter the Sears Tower. We went to the 99th floor skydeck as the line for the 103rd skydeck was at least another 30 minutes of waiting. And we had already waited more than 1 hour to get tickets and to enter the tower. M loves tall buildings. As a child, we took her to lighthouses and, even at 3 and 4 years of age, she insisted on climbing to the top by herself. The Sear's Tower is now the tallest building she has been in and as it is one of the two tallest buildings in the world, that's not a bad first.

After spending several hours on the top deck in the warm summer sun of the double decker hop on/hop off bus tour, we ate lunch at the Navy Pier and rode the Ferris Wheel. I made it out of Chicago (again, the directions, this time  from the parking lot attendant, although they sounded simple, were not so simple) with, as M likes to tell her friends, "Aunt Deb making U-turn after U-turn." On one occassion, I turned down a one way street with 4 lanes on which I was the only car going in my direction (the wrong way). OOPS. Thank goodness, the lane I turned into did not have cars, and the rest of the cars were stopped at the traffic light at the other side of the overpass. I made one of my now infamous U-turns, quickly, while fervently praying that we would get out of Chicago safely with our car and our bodies intact. We did.