Easter Sunday 2011

Route 66 miles today  297

Route 66 miles todate 298

Not so much Easter Sunday as Seamus’ Sunday.  He was in charge today. We were up again at the crack of dawn and ready to explore Chicago on another fine , if cool, day.  Breakfast again in the Executive Rooms and then we hopped into a taxi at 08:30 to get to the Sky Deck. We had been there yesterday, queued for a block and a half only to be told that the queue form there was another two hours. We abandoned the visit.  Today though we were the second group in line. Great banter all round: especially when we noticed that the sign said opening hours September to April was 10:00. We hung on and sure enough there were signs of life at 08:50. We were up on the deck within a few minutes and it was worth the visit: standing out on a glass floor 117 floor s up above Chicago. Surreal and great sights.

After a bit of a stroll through Chicago we were back in the hotel and had a coffee: at which point Seamus produced a stack of large Snicker Doodles he had rescued earlier.  Then it was off to the train.  Our original booked seats you will recal had been cancelled along with the train due to track works continuing that Sunday on the route to St. Louis.  It was a bit of a c=scramble to get on and there appeared to be an extraordinary lack of space. Maybe a lot of people forced to use the train when the airport in St. Louis was closed due to tornado damage.  Anyway we could not find three seats together. Seamus just disappeared.

A wee while later he was back. ‘Ok lads, get the bags we are moving’ he announced. And so we did. To an empty carriage. Installed in great comfort we settled back for the run to St. Louis and hardly noticed that the train ran an hour late. We adjourned to the dining car for dinner. Brendan joined a group with whom he had a fine chat about the state of the nation and the personification of globalisation by Walmart.   Seamus and I were engaged by a couple forced to train it because their flight was cancelled. They are now planning a visit to Ireland.

We arrived at the Renaissance hotel and were told that the rollaway bed we had booked months ago ‘would not fit in the room’ and so we would have to make do.  We dumped our gear and hiked off to the Hard Rock café for an evening nightcap and to get extend our collection of pins. We rambled back by another route which seemed marginally less inviting that the route we had taken to get there. Back in the hotel while the lads powered up their iTouch/phones in the lobby I went to get my netbook to do this Blog. When I got back Seamus announced that there was  problem. Our new room would have no fridge! New room. Oh yes he had interviewed the manager Benjamin and agreed a bigger room and a roller bed at no extra charge. So we moved again. Another successful end to another great day. Thanks Seamus.