Sep 15-20: Chicago 2

Yesterday I rode on Metra out to the far western suburb of Aurora to accede (which is something I learned many years ago to do without unnecessary question) to GV's instruction to visit The Roundhouse craft brewery and restaurant. The place is a superb destination for a few hours out of the city, but, with great unfortunicity, GV neglected to warn me to check online with the brewery's event calendar. So I was there about 5 hours before a great country/blues live gig was to occur. I couldn't stay there that long, so missed it. Bugger!

The 'L' in Chicago, is shorthand for 'EL', which is shorthand for 'Elevated'. Today, I decided to take a ride on the L to see what I could see. Please check out these videos if you'd like to see what I saw. The L isn't an exciting thing to write about but it's really interesting to ride and to see the front and backyards of some of the northern suburb dwellings of Chicago. It's a great perspective of the life of a city.

Then I detrained at the Loop's Washington/Wabash station and strolled over to Millenium Park where I did what I really didn't want to do... mingle with about 4,000 other tourists to take a picture of 'The Bean'. I figured that if I didn't, someone would ask me "why didn't I?" Then I continued down the park to the superb Buckingham Fountain, where I just missed the water show and had to wait for an hour for the next. After that, I had to Uber back to my hotel for a drink, which I deserved.

Tomorrow is an other day (my last in Chicago). On my way out of town, I'm going to meet and have lunch with a chap called Ed Burkhardt. If you're not an old New Zealand Railway hand, like me, you probably won't have heard of him. But I he's a fascinating railroad professional and I'm keen to hear something of his story.Læs mere