Day two in Chicago started out much the same as day one. We got on the hotel shuttle headed toward Midway Airport and the train station. Today, however, we waited on breakfast, determined to make it to Lou Mitchell's for brunch. We had done so much walking the day before, that we were not looking forward to long walks today, but rather utilize the day pass and ride not only the train, but the city bus as much as we could. Once we got downtown, we saw that Lou Mitchell's about 4.5 blocks from the train stop. We decided that wasn't too bad, and walked down past the Willis Tower (which I am sure will have a new name soon), and Union Station and right in the door at Lou Mitchell's.
I had heard that the breakfast crowd can be pretty big, but getting there at about 10:30, we found no one in line and we were seated as soon as we got there, but not before we were each given a fresh donut hole!
Once at the table, we were given our little box of Milk Duds, and our drink orders were taken. Tony and Mom decided to give the "World's Best Coffee" a try and they were not disappointed! They both said that it was really, really good!
Jon, however, had to give their milkshakes a test. He was also not disappointed. We split our orders over breakfast and lunch items, with Mom and Tony ordering breakfast and Jon and I ordering lunch. Jon again got a burger (I'm telling you, he thinks a burger a day is a MUST). After finishing, Jon proclaimed that now Lou Mitchell's has the title of the Best Hamburger and The Berghoff now settles in with a strong second place. We sat there for a little while after we finished brunch, and we noticed the group seated right beside us were taking selfies and they were dressed very nice. A man dressed in a suit, dropped a key out of his pocket, and Tony picked it up and gave it back to him. That is when we learned that this man had just been sworn in as a United States Citizen! We congratulated him and told him how proud we were of him and got on up to head back out to sightsee some more.
We were only about a half a block from Union Station, and Tony wanted to go check it out. He remembered that the movie The Untouchables had been filmed partially in that building, so for sure we had to check it out. Once we found where we had to go to enter (actually across the street from this building), we headed in, down an escalator, and basically under the street and back up into the building. We came to the doors leading into the old building, but found it blocked by a temporary wall. Peeking in, we saw it had been set up for a dinner party of some sort, but we got to see some of the architecture of the ceiling.
After that little let down, we decided to go get on a city bus and make our way to the Adler Planetarium. Since we had bought memberships to the Huntsville Space Museum in Alabama, the Adler gave us free admission, so why not? We headed to the nearest bus stop to catch a bus to take us to another stop where we could catch a bus to the planetarium. We got to the stop for the second bus and the heat and humidity was starting to catch up with us. There really was no air moving, and the sun was beating down with very little options to get into the shade. We had hoped that the bus wasn't too far away, because I had looked up the schedule, but once at the stop, we realized, by texting the number on the bus stop, that the bus was running about 15-20 minute late. By the time the bus had gotten there, we totally appreciated the air conditioning on it!
Once at the planetarium, we were greeted by a lady on the steps asking if we were just arriving and if so, would we like to take their tickets to the show, because they were on their way out. We did, and we thanked them for the offer. We went on in and got our passes for the museum and walked around seeing the various exhibits. Jim Lovell, Astronaut from Apollo 13, is from Chicago, so there were lots of interactive exhibits featuring him. Jon enjoyed the hands on aspect of the museum, and we liked the historical exhibits.
After we had seen just about everything, we decided it was time to take Jon to the little beach next to the planetarium. He had asked the day before if he could put his feet in the water of Lake Michigan, but we hadn't been close to an area that he could. So since it was still pretty hot and humid out, we granted his wish and walked over to the beach. He and Tony waded in a little bit, but said the water was really cold.
After that, we decided to grab some cold drinks and an ice cream at the little stand by the planetarium and start heading back to the bus and make our way back to the hotel for the night. Once we got to the train platform, rush hour was upon us, we had to let one train go on, since it was completely packed, but got on the second with no problem. We made it back to the hotel in time to make a decision on where we wanted to have dinner. Since we were in Chicago, we couldn't miss having a Chicago Style Pizza, so we went over to Giordano's. Dinner was great, but we had to have a little dessert, so we headed off to try to find someplace to get a sweet treat. We ended up at Andy's Frozen Custard and it was really good! After that, we headed back to the hotel to start making plans of what to see the next day on our short drive to Joliet, IL.
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