Take the A-Train to Chicago: Day Three

Saturday, October 25th

The day was one of sleeping in, relaxing, and getting ready to depart. We totally missed breakfast, but grabbed a cookie while we sat, read the newspaper (this time from Minneapolis), and waited for lunch.

We had a thoroughly delightful lunch (well, except for the food) with two women from Wisconsin. They had gone to Washington State for the death of their grandmother. They didn't seem terribly sad, saying that grandma lived to a ripe old age of 100. But they had to de-train in about 45 minutes, and were worried about the slowness of the service. For the first time on our journey, the place was packed. But they managed to get their meal and even order dessert. "I thought we were going to order some chocolate ice cream and take it back to our roomette," said one, laughing because her sister had ordered the cheesecake. Let me tell you, she really enjoyed her cheesecake.

We went back to the room, and watched three states go by. We were finally in Illinois, and from the state line it was only 20 minutes to Union Station. Our cabin steward nicely took our red bag down to the platform and we eventually followed him. We found our way to baggage claim. The next step was finding the car which would take us to the Holiday Inn, something which was a bit of a problem since they never return phone calls, but we found him by the taxi's. He drove us for about 15 minutes, winding in and out of busy streets, until we were finally there.

The room they gave us was a mess -- they explained later that their own employees had used it as an office earlier -- and reeked of smoke, so Val went down, complained, and I found her in the elevator, having gotten us a new room.

So I'm sitting in the room, hearing the cacophonous voices behind me of 20 or so channels on the T.V. as Val channel surfs. That's why I'm on the internet.

Tomorrow: The Chicago Institute of Art in the daytime, and meeting 43Things members at night for pizza!