Day 18 – Angola to Chicago!! – Biltong and Burger

We had to leave Potawatomi Inn quite early as we had to get to Chicago to spend the day there. Once again we ended up with a hotel in the outskirts of the town due to the prices of hotels in the town, but in this instance it didn’t matter too much as the hotel provided a shuttle service to the Metra (Blue Line) that took us downtown in about 25 minutes. This time we went more prepared and I read up on what to see and do in Chicago before we got there (admittedly only in the car on the way there, but still). You can read all about our mad drive(r) to the Metra on Brian’s blog here.
We spent most of the day wandering the streets of Chicago, taking pictures and being very impressed! Chicago was lots of green space, very impressive buildings and a lovely waterfront; basically everything you could want in a city! What I really liked was the flowers everywhere on the streets and the effort that goes into making the streets look pretty. We really had an amazing day in Chicago and of course walked a lot! We didn’t do the Golden Mile or the Old Town or Lincoln Park, and stayed mostly in The Loop and waterfront areaa, but maybe we’ll come back one day. I was of course very impressed with the ‘L’, Chicago’s train system with large parts of it elevated. We also enjoyed ‘The Bean’, Buckingham Fountain, all the amazing architecture, the Riverside Walk, Trump Tower etc.
I’m kind of starting to run out of ways to describe what we do in each location, as essentially we do the same thing all the time, which is walk around and look at buildings, views, parks etc and take lots of pictures, with the occasional meal or drink when we get tired or hungry. I suppose it is all getting a bit ‘old hat’ for us now and not quite as exciting as it was in the first couple of weeks, and it feels like my writing is definitely starting to reflect this as well. We have pretty much settled into a routine now and things aren’t as manic as in the beginning and we can focus on just relaxing and enjoying ourselves.
For dinner we went to Au Cheval, a place that is consistently on all the lists for the best burgers in Chicago. Of course we couldn’t get a table straight away, meaning we had to go and have a drink at a bar across the road, called The Haymarket. The do a huge list of beers and their food menu also looked very tempting. We then discovered there were loads of bars in that part of town, but we couldn’t stay too long as it would have gotten very messy! The burgers at Au Cheval were amazing as promised, though it has to be said that I was VERY hungry! It is a bit of a hipster spot and extremely busy, probably with people like me who read about the burgers somewhere! Afterwards we just made our way back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. We still had to decide whether to go back into Chicago the next day, or take it easy and move on to our next stop without any hurry.
Best experience of the day: Au Cheval. Things I learned today: All American bread we’ve bought so far is pretty awful and it is pointless wasting calories on eating it; rather find something good to eat! You don’t HAVE to have deep-dish pizza in Chicago as it has a very burgeoning burger and food scene so do your research on where to eat before you go.