And now the fun begins! Infinite America, Part 3: Chicago to Washington, DC

Part 1: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018825480
Part 2: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018825709



We arrived at Chicago's Union Station a little after 5 pm. At this point I could get all poetic and talk about the surging masses of humanity eagerly streaming toward the streets of the vibrant city. Naah...we were all headed toward the restroom.



That taken care of, I found Union Station's main staircase, which was made famous in Kevin Costner's The Untouchables. It's still there, and now features escalators! Progress is good.



Amtrak is restoring some of its more historic stations, and there are few more historic than Chicago's Union Station.

I spent one night in Chicago, and lodged at Hosteling International-Chicago. Hostels are the civilian equivalent of open-bay barracks; since I lived in the barracks for over a decade, I figured I'd fit right in. This place is like what you'd get if Conrad Hilton had joined the Army, or an HGTV makeover show invaded Fort Bragg - REALLY nice, and really close to the lake. My room had a window that looked right out on the L, so I kinda felt like I was Elwood Blues. Naturally, at breakfast the next morning I had two pieces of dry white toast.

HI-Chicago is on Congress Avenue. If you walk out the front door and turn left, walking a few blocks gets you to Buckingham Fountain. You'll notice it's off. It normally runs from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. thru mid-October, but on the day I was in Chicago they were preparing the area around it for the Chicago Marathon and the wind was coming in from across the lake...yeah, it would have been pretty miserable trying to erect tents while getting drenched by the water coming off the fountain.



It also gives you a pretty decent view of the historic, and expensive, Congress Hotel...



I then locked up my camera and headed to Giordano's on Jackson Boulevard, just a few blocks away from the hostel, for a Chicago Casserole. The official name for this dish is "stuffed pizza," which is a misnomer. I've also heard it referred to as a "stuffed pie" or an "Easter pie," which are closer to the truth. Imagine making a two-crust apple pie with cheese and pizza meat rather than fruit in it and pizza sauce baked on top, and you're on the right track. It is very tasty and if I lived in Chicago I would eat a lot of them, but tastiness does not change what it is - and what it is, is not a pizza. The other problem is how big these are: I can normally slam down a "small" pizza by myself in one sitting, but a "small" one of these would be a hard row to hoe for two. Some homeless guy got a pretty decent meal that evening. Giordano's has a lunch version of this sized for one, which they should serve all the time.

Amusing Giordano's story: Every Mafia movie has a restaurant with a private dining room in the back where the Mafia met to hammer out deals. Giordano's has one of those rooms...and they seated me in it...next to a table with six guys hammering out a deal. The deal sounded legitimate, but I still thought it was pretty cool.

Before I left Coeur d'Alene I printed out a list of all the places in Chicago where the Blues Brothers was filmed. If the sky was blue I was planning to visit at least the two bridges and the area where Matt and Aretha's restaurant was. And, of course, have some fried chicken somewhere along the way - I don't think I could eat four whole chickens no matter how many Cokes I had with them, but half a chicken is definitely doable. If the sky was gray, I was going to look at the lake and the downtown area.

The sky was grayer than John Boehner's lungs. Downtown, here I come.



Chicago is no longer Carl Sandburg's Hog Butcher for the World, but it's still a Player with Railroads. This particular specimen is part of the Metra Electric District.

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The advantages of buying in bulk: the Chicago River, and the canal connecting it to Lake Michigan, are festooned with drawbridges that all look basically alike.



Like they say...if ya got it, flaunt it. What a lovely place to spend your lunch hour, or to stroll on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Chicago has one tiny problem: The Land Stretcher has not been invented. Creative architects have devised ingenious solutions to that issue, like...



putting an apartment building above a parking garage...



or a road on top of another one...



or a restroom forty feet above street level. Hey, if you can't jump up there you really didn't need to go that bad, now did you?



The Columbia Yacht Club uses this retired Canadian ferry as its clubhouse. A sign posted next to it says the ship will hold an entire passenger train, which makes a ton of sense: if you need to cross a wide body of water, it's better to use a ship than a bridge.



No historical significance here: I just liked this one.



The Merchandise Mart is the nation's premier B2B salon for the furnishings, fixtures and appliance industry. If you are in that industry, you can go in here and see anything you might ever want to sell or install. (If you're not in that industry you can't go in here at all.) At one time the Merchandise Mart was the biggest building by square footage east of the Mississippi, but from the other side of the canal it looks nowhere as big as it is. Maybe it's an optical illusion; it's actually one of the shortest buildings on the canal.



I have some pretty decent photos of the Great Hall at Union Station, but the problem is, the 45mm lens (equivalent to 28mm on my Nikon) I was carrying just isn't wide enough to take in the grandeur of the thing in one frame. I'm thinking "fisheye lens, and lie on the floor pointing straight up" action. So...I present to you one of the coolest lampposts you will ever see.

Finally, I dined at Al's Beef although "dined" seems a bit prissy for the way you eat here: lean over the table, chow down with gusto and worry about the stains on your tie later. The Italian beef sandwich is one of the finer culinary creations this nation has ever produced: a "French dip" sandwich dunked in au jus, and covered with the giardinera Chicagoans put on everything.



A bit after 6 pm, the Capitol Limited took off for Washington. This is one of the wonders of the modern world: huge rock outcroppings were laboriously chipped away over a century ago, and the rock formations would have made beautiful images...if you were carrying a pair of night vision glasses to shoot through, because it is REALLY dark in there. I'll leave you with this little river shot and go on.





Ah, America's favorite Republican-infested sewer.



This is where our best Republican president was shot...



...and this is where he died...



...and this is where he never would have seen the inside of if he had to put up with teabaggers.



There are two ways to plan any vacation. You can buy a guidebook and meticulously arrange your journey to take in all the touristy attractions...or you can stick a pin in a map and find photos there, which is what I do. This is one of the few shots I actually planned before I left.

Unfortunately, today I have to make this short (gotta go to work very early to scrub out a plate processor) but tomorrow...it's off to Boston!