November 4, Chicago







It's 6:30 AM and I'm sitting in the Great Hall of Chicago's Union Station, a truly beautiful hall. Are the walls and pillars made out of marble? I wonder. The station reminds me of the train station in Milan, Italy. A stately building from around 1900 when trains all over the world became such an important way to travel and to move goods. My train leaves at 4PM, I have a day to explore Chicago. I'm waiting for the Amtrak Lounge to open so I can leave my luggage there and go for a walk although the lady that gave me my train ticket when asked, said: " There is not much around here". Wrong! In the few hours that I spent in Chicago, this is what I saw:
1. Lake Michigan
2. Millennium Park with the ultra modern Music Pavilion by Frank Gehry, the Cloud Gate Sculpture
3. Chicago's skyscrapers, new and old, that rise like peaceful giants facing the lake. They are graceful with neat, clean lines, more like sculptures than buildings; elegant and sleek.
4. Sycamore trees
5. The beautiful, rusty iron bridges over the Chicago River, and I ate a breakfast of eggs and bacon plus hush browns at the Marquette on Adam Street.
It's 4:30 and after struggling a bit with my seat-turn-into-bed-cabin also called roomette on the Amtrak, I'm watching another sun set. This time the sun is setting behind some trees in uneventful looking Galesburg, Illinois. This is flat, boring country for sure. It's a dusty pink sunset.
I had a shower and at 6:30 there will be dinner in the lounge. I'm traveling in style: roomette for myself and three meals a day! For another little while , I watch this flat, flat country side, a few cows and mega abandoned industrial areas. The sun is now a red fireball close to the dusty horizon..
I'm travelling on the California Zephyr, all the way to the coast, to Emeryville, California.
There is an announcement and the voice says that we will travel on a bridge over the Mississippi River built in 1898, from the state of Illinois to the state of Iowa. There is still enough light in the sky for me to watch the mighty river. I'm exited and I want to call people to tell them that I have just seen the Mississippi river! Then darkness sets in.