Chicago, Day 2

On to Saturday – we hunted down a Dunkin’ Donuts for some breakfast. Whoa – why don’t we have one of these here? It was awesome. Instead of getting on the train at Schaumburg, we scouted out the stop that was nearest to the train yard we had seen on Friday. We found it and had about half an hour to railfan (this is an insider’s term for chasing trains – I was informed that the in-insider’s term is “foaming” as in “foaming at the mouth.” The things you learn from marriage.) A lot of the yard was blocked by fences, but a break in the fence showed that the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train was still parked there! Its tour was to begin that day, so we pulled in and took some pretty good pictures of the cars and the engine. I could give you more train picture info, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed seeing my husband get excited about checking out the trains and taking pictures.

We took the train to Union Station again. This time, we bought tickets to the trolley tour and half an hour later, we boarded the trolley. We rode for a while checking out the sites and hearing some interesting stories from the driver/tour guide. We got off and took a cab to the Museum of Science and Industry. (The picture of us was taken there.) They have “The Great Train Story” exhibit, which features a very large, $3.5 million exhibit of an HO scale train from Seattle to Chicago. It was pretty sweet – Matt took tons of pictures. After a while, I walked down and ate some Cheetos and Diet Pepsi and called my Dad to kill a little time. They also had a real Burlington Zephyr train, and we happened upon a 20-minute tour. It was cool to hear about the maiden voyage of this high-speed passenger train.

By the time we left, it was dark and cold again, so we waited for the city bus to travel to North Michigan Avenue, a.k.a. The Magnificent Mile. We got off the bus and walked a little, but it was definitely dinner time and Matt had not had a snack, so he was really hungry. I knew he wanted some good deep dish pizza, so I looked online and found the #1 rated deep dish pizza, Gino’s East Pizzeria. I remembered the address, and we used our various maps to navigate a walking path. Good thing we were bundled up – it was definitely chilly. But we got to see a lot of windows and lights along the way. By the time we arrived, the line was definitely out the door. I had read that there is always a wait, so it was just a matter of how long. It was a mere 5-10 minutes before a man came out and announced that 110 people had just left the restaurant, so they needed 20 minutes to clear the tables and we could be seated. Then another woman came out looking for tables of 2, for which we qualified, so we were seated rather quickly. The server informed us that deep dish pizzas would take 45-50 minutes, so we ordered an appetizer and our pizza right away. It was…incredible. I cannot fully describe it with words. It must be personally experienced.

I was pretty tired when we finished at 8:00, and the trains were departing at 8:40 and 10:40, so we grabbed a cab and hoped for the 8:40. We made it in plenty of time, and we were able to drive around and check out Christmas lights before we headed to the hotel.