Spring 2022 trip - Days 15 and 16 Saturday and Sunday May 7th and 8th - Little Rock (AR) to home - 1 urban walk about 3 miles

Saturday night (Sunday morning really)

The train from Little Rock to Chicago ran about 2 hours late.  Neither of us slept very well which is not unusual on the first night of a train journey.  After our short night (about 1:30 am to 6:30 am) the rest of the journey was very trying because the roomette leaves you with 2 day seats that face each other with minimal room once the beds are put up.  Finally getting into Chicago was a relief. 

Sunday

We re-organized our bags in preparation for checking as much as we could because the type of train that goes from Chicago to Rochester has almost no luggage space.  We then headed out to wander around Chicago for a few hours.  We took the Red line train up to Loyola university, an area of town I hadn't explored before.  There wasn't a ton to see in that area but we did walk over to the lake shore and ended up having a wonderful dinner at Beard & Belly on Broadway.  Beard & Belly is paired up with a pie shop (at this location at least) and the pies were such a treat. Brian had a banana cream and I had chocolate cream.  Both were rich and buttery with a soft graham cracker crust.  While I was at dinner I got an email saying our room for the 2nd train had been changed from a roomette to a bedroom. I'm not sure why we got moved but it was very good news because a bedroom has vastly more room and its own bathroom.




The temperature was dropping pretty quickly and the walk to the next CTA stop and then changing trains at another stop to minimize the walk back to union station seemed so cold in our shorts.  We only had about 40 minutes to hang out in Chicago's beautiful train station before the lounge attendant led the first class customers down to the train for early boarding.  Our time in Chicago was a nice break between trains and we got over 3 miles of walking in which we're including in our hike total to push us over 50 miles.  We walked more like 80 miles all together but mostly we don't count urban walks unless they are in a park or whatever.  Chicago we're kind of stretching to say we made our goals but we did walk along the lake a bit too. :)



 

We are so ready to be home and to see our cat and to be in one place.  This was one of our best trips.  There were few irritations, lots of hikes, lots of good meals and overall it was just great.  Even at the end of a great trip we're as glad to get home as we were to leave and that is the feeling this morning as I finish this blog entry just a few miles from Rochester.

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