Day 1:
We started the day by taking the Blue line from O’ Hare Airport to Clark/Lake station and then transferred to State/Lake station. We had purchased the $10 day pass for the CTA and it served us well throughout our trip.
From the station its a close walk to the Riverwalk.
There are a lot of picturesque spots along the Chicago Riverwalk. We saw quite a few interesting and notable buildings including the Trump Tower.
A few minutes into the walk we came across the Vietnam Veternans Memorial.
We walked the Riverwalk to Lower Michigan Avenue and then walked south towards Millenium Park.
In the Millenium park lies one of the iconic Chicago attractions, the Cloud Gate. It was quite early in the morning and the crowds had not arrived yet and so we were able to get a few pictures without too many people around.
After spending about an hour at the Cloud Gate, we walked to the nearby Crown Fountain, a large LED video sculpture that was both interesting and cool.
Within a short walking distance of the Crown Fountain lies The Art Institute of Chicago. My parents really wanted to see the Art Institute because back in 1893, this was the location of the Parliament of the World’s Religions where Swami Vivekananda gave the famous speech.
The place was not open yet and we did not see any memorial or statues outside so continued on. We walked next to Grant Park. Lying at the center of Grant Park is the Buckingham Fountain.
From the fountain we walked across Lakeshore Drive to Lake Michigan.
After spending half hour admiring the skyline and the lake views we walked back to State/Van Buren station to take the CTA back to the airport.
Day 2:
We took the CTA Blue Line again from O’ Hare airport to Clark/Lake and switched to Brown Line to Fullerton Station. From the station we walked to Green City Market (farmers market). We did not find anything interesting at the market and continued our walk by the Pond Habitat Boardwalk.
Finally we visited the Lincoln Park Zoo. A very interesting fact one should know is that this zoo does not carry any entry fee!!
One will be mistaken to think that a “free” zoo will not have many worthwhile things to see but you would be wrong. You could easily spend a whole day here walking around different enclosures to see various wildlife.
After spending about 3 hours at the zoo we were starting to get hungry. We were not about to leave Chicago without trying out the famous “deep dish style Chicago Pizza”. I had researched various restaurants trying to find the best one and had settled on the famous Pequod’s Pizza. We took an Uber to the Claybourne street location.
After about a 20 minute wait we got our table and 45 minutes later we received the yummy goodness below.
After lunch, we had an Uber drop us off at a nearby CTA station and took the train back to the airport.