During the summer, the month before school starts again I always find myself in a bit of a slump. On the one hand I’m excited to get back to school to see my friends, have my own room, and learn. On the other hand, I know that school takes time and that means less time exploring. It’s a bad enough fear that I’ve caught myself saying, “I don’t actually do things when I’m at school.” And well this is simply not true. To canoe trips down the Meramec River with friends to the Red River Gorge I need to remember I do actually do things in school. And that is something that I need to remember when I get busy with a job in the future. Anyways, here are some images of a sporadic train trip to Chicago for the weekend.
It ended up being quite a quick trip but I’m glad that we spent the time to take it. We were able to pack into a hostel room, two four person bunk rooms and a common area made it feel like we had an apartment to ourselves. The hostel was located just a couple blocks away from Grant Park, a short walk to almost anywhere we wanted to be.
The trip had a loose itinerary with the only thing on the list being the blackhawks hockey game the night we arrived. It was nice to not have expectations and hard plans after that first night because it meant we were able to simply explore. After the blackhawks game, we struck out at a couple bars who were charging a ridiculous cover so we just decided to head back to the hostel and hang out together.
The next morning, most of us were hungover from the night before so we quickly found the closest brunch spot just around the corner to fuel back up. It was a cute little cafe in the main lobby of an old skyscraper near the jewelry district and after we had our fill of coffee and eggs we went for a long walk. We went from our hostel to the river walk all the way around the Navy Pier and then back to the Chicago Art Institute where I wanted to see Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. We finished off the day by cat napping and then heading to a Chicago deep dish restaurant with the entire crew to laugh about the night previous and to decide what Sunday morning would be. A truly perfect day in Chicago.