Next Stop Chicago

After an early night, we were more refreshed and ready for the 5 hour train journey to Chicago. We did consider flying, but the train gives you a different perspective and time to blog….

As we were on our walking tour yesterday, we were taken into a place called Roasting Plant Detroit; the coffee is roasted there and then so we thought we would try it rather than the usual hotel coffee which isn’t always the best. I had a Roasting Plant Blend and Iain a Jamaican Blue; the place was heaving so it must be doing something right! We sat in the park drinking our lovely coffees (I added some sugar and milk which is probably sacrilege but it was still amazing!) before walking back to the hotel to check out and grab a cab to the Amtrak station.


The train let me catch up on blogging but it was freezing; the woman beside us had slippers and a blanket so she was obviously a seasoned traveller! We arrived into Chicago almost 2 hours late, but at least it was warm when we got off at Union Station. We decided to get an Uber to the hotel as it was a fair bit away, thank goodness we did as the traffic was crazy as it was now rush hour and public transport was mental!

We checked into our hotel, the Warwick Allerton, and headed straight out for food as we were starving. I had already looked at some of the pizza joints in Chicago so we decided to try Giordano's Pizza only a 5 minute walk from the hotel. We ordered a small Chicago Deep Dish to share; we were starving and they tell you it will take at least 45 minutes to serve so we had a sharing platter too...BIG MISTAKE! The platter was fantastic, and so was the pizza, but the amount of food was unreal! We couldn't even face getting the last slice boxed!







After the insane amount of food, we wandered down the magnificent mile shopping area to try and make some space for beer. We met up with a few friends from the convention at the original Billy Goat Tavern and drank the night away watching baseball (oh, and learning the rules!). As an aside, the Billy Goat Tavern got its name from a story about a guy who tried to take his goat to the game in 1945 for good luck and was refused. So, he placed a curse on the team so they would never win again while the goat was alive. I would explain more but this link will really be the best story you will read today - https://www.billygoattavern.com/legend/curse/



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