Chicago-Day 0ne

  My first day in Chicago started out really late since I spent all the morning in my room reading my Kindle.  I left my room after 1pm.  It took a while to get to the airport from the hotel by shuttle and another hour or so to get to the area in the city where I would get the bus to where I’d planned for that day.  I had planned to go to Navy Pier that day, but I got to Union Station around 4 pm and spent nearly another half hour searching the streets nearby to find the bus stop for the bus to Navy Pier.  I finally found this:

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I thought that meant that the buses would stop somewhere between 6 and 7 at night.  Since it was already going on five at night, it seemed pointless to me to go there in time to get on the bus to come back, I decided to wait and visit Navy Pier another day.  Hm, so where to go?  I went back to the subway station to find something that would be open at night and found The Merchandise Mart.  I remembered that as in the fashion district and assumed it was a mall.  I got on the subway and headed out before looking through my fliers.  That’s were I read what painted The Merchandise Mart was more of an office space only open during office hours, more showroom than store.  By that time office hours were over so I needed another plan.  I decided to get off the subway where I would have to switch trains and find supper.  It turned out that I got off at the stop for the huge city library.

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After a long walk just wandering to find food, I settled for a deli of a local brand I didn’t know and stopped into Potbelly for an awesome wrap and delicious smoothie.

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After that I still had some time to wander and found these two Indians firing at each other.

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By then I was rather bored and annoyed at myself for not planning well enough to make my plans work so I decided to head back to my room.  I stopped at a corner store for breakfast the next morning before getting on the subway.  When I got back to my room I sat down and planned out the rest of my trip.  I was not going to go through another day trying to decide my plans as I went.  I had learned my lesson and looked forward to the next day.