I must have slept well because I was awake by 6:00am. I fixed myself some breakfast of the two mini boxes of Frosted Flakes I had brought from home and some non spoiling type milk. I ate while the coffee machine did its thing, then continued working on our day in Chicago. The first order of business was to see the difference between just buying admissions vs getting the Chicago Citypass for $106 each. I wanted to take Ally to The Fields Museum and The Art Institute at a minimum, and admission to those alone were $76 each. So for another $30 the Citypass got us admission to the Shedd Aquarium ($40 each), The Skywalk at the Willis Tower ($25 each) and The Museum of Science and Industry ($22 each). As a bonus you don’t have to buy it ahead of time, its available for sale at any of the attractions.
So with our itinerary set, I let Ally sleep until 7:45am. We had a long day of being tourists and needed an early start to I get as much done as we could.
Our first stop was the cafe in the hotel. Ally had a piece of poundcake and some juice, I had a sausage, tomato, green pepper, and cheese omelet, a bowl of potatoes that were a little fried and seasoned with salsa, and two pieces of white toast. The omelet was more of a scramble, but tasty.
We walked out to the front of the hotel, and two minutes later were in an Uber heading to the Fields Museum. The ride only cost us a total of $7 for the ten minute drive. We got there earlier than they opened at 9:00am. We decided to walk the three blocks across the park to the Shedd Aquarium instead of just standing around waiting. We got into the line just as they opened, and within five minutes we were almost to the counter when a lady asked us to go the Membership desk to buy our tickets instead. I don’t think it saved us any time, but $106 dollars later we had our admissions to five of the local attractions. It is a good deal at $106, because buying all of the tickets separately would cost you over double. This Citypass isn’t the only only way to save on attractions, because I found one that was more of an alá carte and offered many more attractions from which to chose. 
The other bonus with the Citypass is that you also get tickets to the exclusive exhibits at both The Fields Museum and the Shedd Aquarium. Both attraction have 3D shows that are inclusive with your Citipass. Its a good two day taste of what Chicago has to offer, and you could cram it into one long day if you had the stamina. 
The Aquarium was interesting, as most of them are, and we got to see a Seaworld type show with dolphins. The 3D movie was about different kinds of sharks and had bubbles that would float down from the ceiling from time to time. The chair in front of you gave you a little spray of water, and your seat would shake at various points in the twenty minute show.
We finished up the movie then walked over to The Fields Museum. It is a really huge museum with enough exhibits to keep you busy for at least six hours. We walked around for two, only focusing on a few of them. They had a really interesting section about mummies and their dinosaur section is pretty outstanding. They had moved Sue, their famous t-rex skeleton, upstairs. She has become so famous that she is getting a new home and has her own gift shop, The Sue Store. We were disappointed when we found her gone from the main lobby, but were mollified that you can still get a selfie with her through a window. 
It was about a 25 minute walk through the park and along a street to The Art Institute location. Ally was starting to get a little tired from the five hours of continuous walking, and she really wasn’t wearing the right kind of shoes. didn’t have shoes. We decided to take a sitting break at a cafe, shared some flatbread covered in pesto, olives, and feta, and a plate of shoestring fries. Ally surprised me by trying and liking the flatbread, and I’ve always been a fan of the thin, crisp, shoestring style fries. A quick stop at a Starbucks across from the Art Institute secured me an Illinois mug.
The Art Institute of Chicago is three huge stories of art. The Impressionist section takes up much of the second floor and is by far my favorite section. It always reminds me of the movie, Farris Bueler’s Day Off, because the building is featured in that movie. Especially one of my favorite works by XXX, a great example of pointillism. We probably looked at half of the Art Institute before Ally was pretty much done being a tourist. We finished by walking by the Crown Fountain, The Bean, then sat for an hour at Giordano’s waiting for our medium meat lovers deep dish pizza to be ready. A $9 Uber ride got us back to our hotel, where we ate and relaxed. I was disappointed we didn’t get to the Willis Tower and I didn’t think we had enough time the following day to do the Museum of Science and Industry, I know it won’t be the last time I’m in Chicago. I’ve already started planning my next trip with Shar. I’m thinking that we’ll take at least days five days and really explore one of the greatest cities in the United States.
Day 9
I kept waking up, falling back to sleep for an hour, then waking up again. I gave up this routine at 9:00am and took a shower. We had a lot to do before getting back on the train at 2:00pm, so I started by organizing the Food Duffle in anticipation of restocking. That took about ten minutes, and I spent another five minutes finding a Starbucks location. I was glad it was only a mile away, and had discovered that I could exchange the last mug I had bought. The mugs that I had bought over the last two months had been the older generation, and the one I had bought across from the Art Institute was the newest. The last order of business was to find a grocery story, an I did just down the road from the Starbucks. I played some Bard’s Tale until 10:20am, got Ally moving, and we walked out the door at 11:00am.
Our rent a car had survived well in the hotel parking lot, and we got everything packed up. The Starbucks turned out to be a great find. Not only did they have the correct generation of Illinois mug, but I was able to trade it straight across without a complicated exchange process. I rounded off my fifth and final mug by buying one dedicated to Chicago vs the entire state. I had seen the same thing when Shar and I were in New York earlier in the summer. I will have a very happy masseuse the next time I see her, and should be able to barter two hours of massage for my “gift” of ten mugs. It had been both challenging and fun finding Starbucks locations along my route of travel, then having the quest continue in each state because some of the locations didn’t have mugs.
Our next stop turned out to be interesting as well. The grocery story, Jules something, had turned into a Walgreens, and google maps hadn’t updated the change. Luckily, they had everything that we were looking for to restock the Food Duffle. When I finished repacking, I realized that once again I bought too much.
On our way to the freeway we stopped at a Shell and filled up the rent a car. I knew I was going to be hammered by a one way fee, so there was no reason to add a refilling fee to it as well. The car’s usb port decided it was done working, so the apple play stopped working. I prefer seeing the driving directions on the screen vs just listening to Siri. We zipped downtown, easily found Union Station, but couldn’t find even signs pointing us to Avis anywhere. After three times of circling the block, I found a spot to pull over. I kept calling the Avis counter until I got through, getting the correct address and better instructions. It turned out that you have to enter a parking structure on the next block and follow signs for Avis at that point. It still took us another loop around the block when traffic wouldn’t let me over into the correct lane.
We said goodbye to the Ford Focus, began working our way through a maze of twisty passages, and finally found the Avis Counter. Ally and I had put 1,914 miles on the rent a car, and were the final cost for the week was over $700. The unexpected eleven hour delay by Amtrak ended up costing me around $450: an increase of about $125 for the day before car reservation, $25 more in gas to drive an extra 2 hours from Wisconsin, and the $300 one way fee to leave the car in Chicago vs taking it back to La Crosse. I was disappointed, but not devastated. Ally and I would have had to sacrifice our entire day of being tourists to avoid the $300 fee.
I misunderstood the directions from the Avis counter attendant, so we ended up walking around Union Station in circles for fifteen minutes before finding the ticket counter. It took another ten minutes before we found the right track. We got there just as passengers were lining up to board, but ended up standing in line for another ten minutes, sitting for five minutes, then another ten minutes in line after that. We got sent to the same car we had traveled on during our Empire Builder trip, but this time we were four rows back from the door instead of starting out in the front row. It was a good thing too, because this train started full and stayed that way.
I have to learn to relax instead of getting so nutty when I experience a new aspect of traveling. Once I have been to a new airport, or have done a new process, like boarding a train, I’m awesome. Basically, I’m not a fun travel companion until I hit familiar territory.
We got settled into our seats, organized our entertainment, and watched Chicago recede into the distance as we left at exactly 2:00pm. We passed lots of small towns and corn field once again dominated the landscape. By the time it was dark we were in Iowa and heading towards Nebraska. I once again envied Ally’s ability to fall asleep anywhere, though I dozed on and off for most of the night.
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