We were on the train from Chicago Airport into the city. What I didn't
mention was that someone who shall remain nameless said, "Oh great, now
eveyone knows we are tourists". <g> As we travelled in I watched the
streams of traffic and looked at the housing and neighbourhoods. Strange
thing is that, apart from differing architectural styles, it wasn't much
different to travelling into Manchester, or London, or Paris, or Barcelona.
It seems like a big city is a big city though I suspect that a big city in
the poorer parts of the world is a different animal altogether. Eventually
we reached a part where things started looking more prosperous and then we
reached our destination.
Not knowing what else to do we followed another passenger out of an exit
which I now believe was the wrong thing to do as we never found the Illinois
State Building as we ended up on the street. We were faced immediately with
the Hollywood immortalised elevated railway. I would have liked to travel on
it but prudence dictated that we did not. I was rather disappointed with it
as it seemed very dilapidated. We then started to negotiate the streets - a
frightening experience in itself. All the traffic was coming at us in the
"wrong" direction (my wife told me off for calling it wrong but I'm sure
that you will take my point). Even the "walk", "don't walk" signs were not
totally reliable as, of course, you are allowed to right turn on red!!!! We
walked a couple of blocks and found the river (? anyone know) and also
discovered why Chicago is called Windy City).
Not wanting to miss our flight we decided not to venture any further and
looked for somewhere to eat. We ended up in Popeye's (as we had McDonald's
at home). Again, for no logical reason, I felt under pressure and didn't
really take enough time to look at what was on offer and ordered chicken and
biscuits which turned out to be far more than we could manage. The
"biscuits" were what we would have called scones and would not contemplate
eating without butter at least and usually jam as well!!! Again the place
just reminded me of parts of Manchester.
Having eaten we made our way back to the station and back to the airport. We
then found our way to the departure gate but not without nearly causing a
bomb scare. I passed a bag through the scanner and, for some reason, thought
that Chris, my wife, had picked it up. It was some time later that we
realized that neither of us had it and returned to retrieve it! Sitting in
the departure lounge gave me my first glimpse of the divergence of our
language. I heard the announcement that the plane to Dallas (say) would take
off momentarily. In England, momentarily means for a very short time rather
than in a moment. I thought that there might be some disappointed passengers
<g>.
Hmm, this may be quite a saga. We haven't landed at Albuquerque yet and we
still have to go from there to Vancouver via the Grand Canyon. Next
installment soon.
BoW
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