September 13th & 14th
It was our last day in Toronto today. We needed to be at the bus station for about 5pm to catch our bus to Chicago, and had to vacate our room at the hostel by 11am, so we packed up our stuff and left it at the hostel and headed back down to the Music Garden by Lakeside. We had a couple of pleasant hours sat here reading books in the sun before heading back to the hostel to have a late lunch and grab our bags for the 20 minute walk to the bus station.
The bus journey was uneventful, taking just under 12 hours, making several stops along the way. The crossing into the USA was quite strange - you enter a tunnel in Windsor on the Canadian side of the river, and come up the other side in Detroit, after a short stop at customs and immigration.
We got into Chicago at 5:15am, so hung around at the bus station until it got light before taking the short walk around the corner to the hostel which is in Greek Town. We couldn’t check in until 2pm, so left our bags there and, after a stop off at Starbucks for some breakfast, wandered into downtown Chicago, which was only about a 30 minute walk.
We went to the Chicago Cultural Center first, which houses the main Tourist Information, as well as having free Wi-Fi, so we caught up with some people there, and gathered some information. This was a great building for getting information and finding our feet - every town should have one! The inside of this building is quite spectacular, with many mosaic walls and a Tiffany glass dome roof which has just been renovated. They also hold free concerts and events.
We then walked over to Millenium Park, which has several sculptures including the Bean.
We sat around here for an hour or so, waiting for the free show at Midday at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. This turned out to be some artsy dance act which we really weren’t impressed by. We’ll try again tomorrow, as there’s something different on every day.
We headed down to Lake Shore then and made a circuit back round into town before catching the Subway back to the hostel where we were now able to check in and get a much needed shower and some kip.
For dinner we went to the much famed Giordano’s Pizza restaurant, where there stuffed pizzas are supposed to be pretty good. When it arrived it looks more like a pie than a pizza. Whilst tasty, it was rather too “pie-y” for me, so not something I would look to have again.
After dinner, we headed out to Navy Pier which is home to all sorts of attractions, restaurants, an IMAX cinema etc. It was pretty quiet about being a Monday night, and quite a few places were closed. Apparentley it’s Chicago’s biggest tourist destination, so it must get pretty packed at times. They have fireworks displays on Wednesday and Friday night this week, so we’ll probably head back over that way later in the week to catch one of those.
