Exploring Chicago
I'm actually writing this on Tuesday the 20th...
So, after our night in our free hotel room, eating our free food, with our plane scheduled to depart at 17:55 the plan was this:
- get up at a reasonable hour
- check out and leave bags with hotel
- eat a free breakfast
- get the hotel's shuttle bus to the train station
- get the train into Chicago for a little sightseeing
- get the train back to the station
- get the hotel shuttle back to the hotel
- pick up our luggage
- get the hotel shuttle to the airport
- check in at airport
- eat a free lunch
- fly home
What actually happened was this
- woke up at a reasonable hour
- decided bed was comfy, snoozed a little longer
- realised checkout wasn't until 1 PM
- napped
- looked at plan above, decided it looked a bit tiring
- watched some TV
- read some books
- generally lounged until 12:30
- got dressed
- checked out and left bags with hotel
- combined breakfast and lunch vouchers in order to eat sumptuous three course lunch at restaurant affiliated to hotel
- wrestled with newspaper vending machine for a while
- It turns out that although it was Sunday, the machine still contained Saturday's edition. I was putting in the extra money for Sunday, but the machine refused to open unless the exact money was in the box.
- returned to hotel and claimed bags
- took the hotel shuttle to the airport
- checked in at airport: when asked "Have your bags been out of your direct control at any time since you packed them", lied.
- waited around for a few hours reading books and playing Pokemon and Tetris respectively.
- flew home
My kind if town, Chicago.
The restaurant was called Tiffany's. This provided opportunity for banter. We decided we could class our meal as breakfast (since it was our first meal of the day unless you include Reisen chocolates nibbled on in bed). Nobody even vaguely resembling Audrey Hepburn was present. At least, not the 1961 Audrey Hepburn. For all I know one of the old ladies complaining about the draft (air con) was Audrey herself.
The flight was long and not particularly comfortable. My headphone socket didn't work again. The center aisle is a lot less comfortable than the sides, I reckon. They fed us well and one of the cabin crew took a liking to my shirt -- "here's your coffee, party animal".
When we landed it was Monday morning...