The impromptu travels have always been fun considering my group of friends and the laziness we possess. I have always been thinking of writing about my travels, but considering my procrastination and the busy schedule (which is completely not true), I've skipped some of the most important journeys mainly covering the major cities and to mention a few would be New York City, Atlantic city, Texas, Pittsburgh, and North Carolina.
Given that it's been a year since I had first traveled to the United States in 2014, I had developed a sense of traveler's eye. But considering the Master's Program that I had enrolled for, I haven't had a lot of spare time to travel so I had to squeeze in my journeys or limit them to weekends or the long weekends.
It is true that when people have the right age they don't have the money to travel, and when they do have the money they don't have the time to explore and when they have both time and money they tend to lose the age. In order not to fall into any of those three categories, I've decided that I would make the ends meet and explore the world even with all the three constraints of money, age and time. And with this motto in mind, I have decided that I would travel the world with all my resources and I've decided that I would record all the memories so that when I grow old, I would look back just to see how effectively have I used my days.
What inspired me to write this story:
Recently I had traveled to one of the busiest cities of the United States which is bustling with people from all corners of the world and which is popularly known for its architectural marvels. Yes, you must have guessed it right by this time and its Chicago- The Windy city.
I had always wanted to travel to this place, considering that Chicago is not so far from Michigan (where I live), I couldn't get a chance to travel although many of my friends had been to this place multiple number of times and they had been cursing their fate for not being able to live there. Whenever any of my friends traveled to Chicago, the first thing they would start off bragging about would be the roads of Michigan, they would start off with the potholes and the unfinished roads and then they would turn their views to the beautiful high rise building of the city and would infuse my brain with their love of Chicago, and this had always annoyed me. I love Michigan and I cannot stand a word against it as such decided that I would have to travel to this place at least once to check out the city and to see what's so special about this place that everyone is craving to live there.
I had always wanted to travel to this place, considering that Chicago is not so far from Michigan (where I live), I couldn't get a chance to travel although many of my friends had been to this place multiple number of times and they had been cursing their fate for not being able to live there. Whenever any of my friends traveled to Chicago, the first thing they would start off bragging about would be the roads of Michigan, they would start off with the potholes and the unfinished roads and then they would turn their views to the beautiful high rise building of the city and would infuse my brain with their love of Chicago, and this had always annoyed me. I love Michigan and I cannot stand a word against it as such decided that I would have to travel to this place at least once to check out the city and to see what's so special about this place that everyone is craving to live there.
And one fine day, one of my friend had a chance to travel to India (I would consider that as a golden opportunity to taste the homemade Indian food as opposed the daily insipid diet that we as bachelors cook regularly just to satiate hunger), so taking this as an opportunity we planned on making a road trip (a superfluous word to show off that we traveled a good amount of distance on road) to Chicago just to wave him goodbye (student’s mentality: just to save the ticket from Detroit to Chicago). Finally after my band of friends agreed upon this, the dates were fixed and the tickets were booked.
I being so much frustrated by the amount of good things fed into my ears about Chicago, started searching for the famous destinations in this windy city, and indeed I stumbled upon so many places that I started prioritizing the exhaustive list of all the places in accordance with the two days that we had planned to stay. So my list for the two days went on like this:
- World famous Giordano’s Deep Dish Pizza (To get killed by the cheese)
- Skydeck -Willis Tower (To experience nausea with the vertigo)
- Navy Pier (To go blind with the amazing fireworks
- Chicago’s subway train (To avoid the deadly traffic)
- Chicago architecture tour (To get amused by the Architectural marvel)
- Museum of Science and Industry (For the love of technology)
- Millennium Park- Cloud Gate (cause all Indians take a picture here)
- Magnificent Mile (To go bankrupt with all the shopping)
- Walk along the downtown (To see the colors of America)
- Chicago beach at the lake Michigan (Because babes look gorgeous in Bikinis)
- 360 Chicago
- Shedd Aquarium
The Journey
This list continued but I had to condense it for the two day travel. We started off the journey on Friday the 10th of July (Damn..!! Two days short of the 13th) by renting the all new Chevrolet Impala (price: $40 per day) at National Alamo. I must admit that the General Motors had seriously worked on their blackboards and thrown in their best of Stylists, Designers and Engineers into this piece of sheet metal. It’s a sheer beauty to look and ride this 3.6L V6 engine with 300 horses under the shiny metal (I am sorry to elaborate this but the slightest touch of automobiles grabs me off the grid).
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| Right before the Journey to the Windy City |
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| DaysInn |
Day-1
The day started off with each of us
planning on what to see for the rest of the day, but the main agenda for the
day remained that we would drop off our friend at the Chicago
O'Hare International Airport, by 17:30 as he had to catch
the flight to India by 20:30. So we reached the Chicago downtown by 11:00.
But every one of us knew that Chicago is a busy city and considering the
downtown which is always crowded by people, we all feared as to where to park
our vehicle. Parking had been one of the major problem we faced on many of the
travels in the past, and this time we had come up with a good solution for this
problem and for this we had to take help of the smartphone industry. We found
out that there is a smartphone app for finding out the parking spaces in cities
through which we could book the parking spots and it's called the spothero app
[android, iPhone]
and this tiny app saved us a lot of frustration thanks to technology. Using
this app we found a convenient place to park our car at prudential
plaza which was the cheapest place
we found to park for that day and also which was closer to the Millennium
park, Chicago
river walk, and the Magnificent
mile.
After parking, we finally ventured
out into the downtown, we first started off with the Millennium Park [map]
which has the cloud gate or more popularly known "Bean". It was
designed by Indian Born British artist named Anish Kapoor and
he named it "The Cloud Gate"
[map] as 80% of its surface reflects the sky, and it is made of
168 steel plates welded together with no visible seams resembling liquid
mercury. It adds up to the beauty of the city as more and more visitors are
drawn towards this piece of architectural marvel.
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| Cloud Gate |
After clicking few snaps at the cloud gate we moved along the park and encountered the Jay Pritzker Pavilion [map], this is the area where we found the young and the old dancing to the tunes of the instructor and upon further inquiry we found out that it was Zumba which resembles the form of dance but essentially turns out to be a workout session with dance moves. The place basically is an amphitheater with a capacity to accommodate 11000 people in a single gathering good enough for social events. And the one that was going on at that time was the summer workout session in which any one could participate.
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| Jay Pritzker Pavilion |
Magnificent Mile [map]
We walked through the Pritzker pavilion and came out through the walkway which connected the art institute of Chicago, but us being not the art connoisseurs had to take a U-turn and check the next destination which was the Magnificent Mile [map]. This is one of the main attractions for the people who see Chicago as a shopping destination. You would find all sorts of brands ranging from Gap to Zara and the best part is that these shops have sale running from time to time. So if you are planning on shopping along with your girlfriend in Chicago then I would suggest this place so save your time and money.
Garrett Popcorn shop [map]
While walking along our way from the Millennium Park to the Magnificent Mile we stopped at this shop which was solely dedicated to making popcorn. We were amazed to see a big popcorn shop in the middle of this busy downtown and wondered how something as trivial as popcorn could generate such huge amounts of income that a whole shop is dedicated to serving popcorn to people, and as we were wondering about this we smelled the sweet scent of the popcorn slowly drawing us towards the shop and in no time we were inside the shop choosing the different flavors and hence we concluded that it was the taste of the popcorn that had essentially generated the revenue. The popcorn tasted of something that I had never tasted before it was just perfect in all senses. We bought two different flavors one of which was caramel and the other being spicy cheese something which tasted absolutely mouthwatering. And then we continued walking from one shop to another to see the different brands of clothing and other stuff.
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| Garrett Popcorn |
CTA Blue Line [map]
By the time our shopping had ended, we were exhausted and we had to travel to O’Hare international airport to send off our friend. So we headed towards the subway as it was the fastest means of transport in that busy traffic. We found out that the nearest subway station was at Monroe and so we picked up our luggage from the parking where we had stuffed it up in the Prudential Plaza and then carried it all the way to Monroe subway station and took tickets for the CTA Blueline Express to the O’Hare International airport.
It always amazes me comparing the train fares to other means of transport and finding them to be so economical. Travelling in the subway is a great experience (similar to the one that I had in India with the MMTS in Hyderabad except for lesser people and faster speeds) with people travelling to different destinations. Looking through the windows of the train reminded me of the childhood days when we used to travel in train during the summer vacation to our grandfather’s place and I used to fight with my sister for the window seat to enjoy the view of the paddy fields and villages moving in front of us quickly as the train zipped with its enormous speed (although we used to fall asleep every time the train starts picking up momentum). It took approximately 30 minutes for the express to reach our destination which is also the dead end of the city for the trains. We quickly reached for the airport terminal and waved good bye to our friend as he was all excited to visit India after 3 years of his stay here at the United States. And then we returned to the same old CTA Blue line station and planned the next part of our journey.
We had already consumed a day without our notice and now we had to check out the next destination on our agenda and it was the Willis Tower [map]. So we booked our tickets to the Jackson [map] subway station so that it would be a 10 minute walk from there to the tower. And so did we get down at the station and started walking. This part of the city was not so active with traffic or people when compared to the one at the Millennium Park, and we wondered if it was the time that had taken a toll on the movements as it was 20:30 in the night but the sunlight was pretty bright (Basic Geography: The sun sets at 20:30 usually in the summer as North America is nearer to the poles).
Willis Tower [map]
Strolling through the streets following the directions of Google maps we finally reached the Willis tower [map] (price:$19) and let me tell you that it’s no joke constructing 108 floors with all the fledgling technology in 1973 (praise the architects). It enjoyed the status of being the world’s tallest building beating the world trade center until recent times (Burj Khalifa takes pride in being the tallest now). The building looks behemoth from the ground level and one could easily experience vertigo from the top most floor of the building and I’m sure of it (experience speaks volumes). The main attraction of this tower is the Skydeck at 103 floor..!! Boy it’s a treat to view the city from the ledge..!! The tickets to this Skydeck are $19 per person and there is an option for the VIP entrance which costs a whopping $40 which I wouldn’t suggest as both of them would get you to the Skydeck almost at an equal pace. The elevator to the 103 floor is the best part of this building, moving at 18.2 mph it is one of the fastest moving elevators in North America and the most amazing part of it is that you wouldn’t realize the G-force acting on your body. Once there at the 103 floor, you would literally see the entire city of Chicago coming to life and its breathtaking to view such a beautiful city from that altitude. And there’s a ledge which has a glass balcony which can be extended approximately 4 feet from the portico of the 103rd floor, which gives the spine chilling view of the city. We stayed there until 21:30 and got down and got into a cab and then moved on to the next thing on our list which was the Navy Pier.
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| View from the 103rd Floor |
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| The breathtaking view of Chicago from the SkyDeck |
Navy Pier [map]
It was a $10 drive from Willis tower to the Navy Pier and I must say that Chicago comes to peace with the sky at this point. Navy pier (price: free) is that kind of a place where most of couples come along with their kids so that they can leave them in the park so as to spend some quality time with their spouse without having the fear of losing their kids in the crowd. We had specifically been to this place to see the AON SUMMER FIREWORKS on that Saturday night. The night was calm with clear sky, and the people settled in by 22:00 at this place to get a clear view of the spectacular fireworks which are shot biweekly from the 4th of July (Independence day) until September 5th. It was 22:15 in the night and the music started off slowly from nowhere and all of a sudden there was a spectacular view of the fireworks, and the fireworks danced to the tunes of the music being played. It was amazing to see fireworks in the United States after one and half year of Diwali celebrations in India. [Fireworks Video].
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| Fireworks |
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| Giant Wheel |
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| Merry Go Round |
The fireworks came to a halt after 20 minutes and all of a sudden it started drizzling quietly and everyone was rushing to get a cab and we too got into a cab and rushed to the prudential plaza to get our car. We were all very hungry by then and immediately looked at our “Things to do at Chicago list” and guess what we found out?
Hyderabad House [map]
Being an Indian and especially from Hyderabad, the one thing that comes out of my mouth whenever I feel like having delicious food is the authentic Hyderbadi Biryani. And at that point of time when we were all hungry and looked at out “Things to do” we couldn’t thank God more than this, as it was the Hyderabad House which was listed as the most important thing for that night. So we set our GPS to the HYDERABAD HOUSE at the Devon Street [map] and zoomed to this place cutting through the night traffic. The place itself smelled so good that it reminded me of the place at Hyderabad where I regularly used to have Chicken Biryani (I miss India) and then we immediately ordered chicken Biryani for everyone and before having the Biryani we had ordered Haleem and with the first spoon of Haleem stuffed into my mouth I felt like the most happiest person and gained immense respect to the Indian Dishes. Having bland dishes daily leaves you tasteless and craving for spicy food and when you have it all at once you don’t know what to do with it.
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| Hyderabad House Haleem and Biryani |
The day ended with us having "The" Haleem, and finally we wanted to take some rest as we were really exhausted covering most of the places we thought about on the first day so we set out to look for a hotel for the night. Now comes the most interesting part of the journey, as I said earlier that we wanted to look for an accommodation "on the fly", we never really looked at hotels or any sort of accommodation and we started browsing through our phones to look for some decent hotel below $150 for the night, but to our surprise we dialed nearly 20 hotels and all of them returned with the same answer that there wasn't any vacancy, we tried all the hotels covering a radius of 20 miles from the Chicago downtown and it was already 02:00 in the morning and we were all tired so finally we decided that we would park the car in the rest area nearby the freeway and sleep in the car, and hence we reached a nearby rest area and slept in the car for the night. It was a nice experience sleeping in the car for 5-6 hours in the dark night.
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