Chicago; Saturday, 20 April, 2019

I managed to stay asleep for most of the night, but was still up long before breakfast was ready to be served, so had another prolonged shower and a couple of cups of coffee from the in room Nespresso before heading down for some food.

One of the main attractions that people recommended doing in Chicago was the architectural cruise down the Chicago river, so I had pre-booked a ticket for the first English Language tour of the morning at 10am. It meant I had lots of time to get down to the river side after breakfast, but it did mean that I was towards the front, though not at the very front, of the queue and consequently was able to get a good seat at the very front of the boat for the best views.

The boat tours up the Main spur of the river before briefly heading up the Northern channel and then back down part of the south channel before returning back to the start via the area around the Lake Michigan lock. The on-board guide had lots of information to tell about the various buildings alongside the river as we travelled down it, but some of the most interesting information was about who the US managed to reverse the flow of the river through the use of canals so that rather than flowing into Lake Michigan it now flows into the Mississippi and eventually empties into the Gulf of Mexico (albeit the main reason being that Chicago was poisoning itself by flushing its sewage and rubbish straight into the river and into Lake Michigan, the city’s source of clean water – instead it became St Louis problem)

Having returned to the start point I caught the bus a couple of stops north to the John Hancock Centre with the intention of going up the tower to the 360 Chicago observation gallery on the 94th floor. However, as it was a Saturday, and a sunny day, the queue was in excess of two and a half hours to get to the top, so I decided to postpone that for another day. Instead I had a quick lunch and then headed back to the river to pick up the Big Bus.

The Chicago Big Bus provides the standard hop-on-hop-off open-top bus tour, though in Chicago it uses live guides to give the tour rather than a recorded commentary. This does mean that you can usually get a more interesting and personal tour, but it does occasionally mean you’ll get someone who clearly is only going through the motions and the first tour round the city wasn’t the most interesting.

Back at the start point I joined the next, and as it turned out penultimate, tour of the evening. This time the tour guide was much more engaging – if slightly obsessed with the number of Walgreens stores located in Chicago (The company having been founded in the city in the early part of the 20th century and now the parent company of it’s British equivalent Boots).

After the tour I wandered back through the central downtown Loop area of the city to my hotel to freshen up before heading out to dinner in a nearby restaurant that serves one of the city’s specialities the deep-dish pizza.

The restaurant was very busy, so I had to eat at the bar – but that did mean my order was taken really quickly, which is good given it takes 45 minutes to properly cook one of these behemoths – less pizza more full on mozzarella and tomato pie. In the end, despite having only had a small lunch many hours previously, I was only able to complete just over half the small sized pizza and left the restaurant with a dangerously distended stomach and a doggy bag with the remaining pizza.

I headed back to the hotel and headed straight to bed wanting to try and sleep off the pizza.