Chicago Day 1

We started out pretty early with a 9-something flight from Philly to Chicago Midway.  The flight was uneventful (thank goodness) and we arrived in Chicago somewhat early.  We made our way through the airport to the orange line train and made our way into the city for the very first time. We had a whole itinerary planned out, so we made our way toward activity one, which was a bus tour of the city.  We were not able to get on the exact tour we wanted, but we got on a tour of the south part of Chicago and off we went.  For the next 2 hours, we sat on a tour bus with a bunch of old people and saw the sights.  We saw the University of Chicago's campus, Lake Michigan (kinda hard to miss in Chicago), lots of different kinds of buildings, Barack Obama's house, the Sprint store (once a Baskin Robbins) where Barack and Michelle Obama first kissed (awwwww), a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and lot more.  It was a blast.  After our bus tour, we made our way over to the Sears Tower (or Willis Building, or whatever they're calling in now), and went up to the observation deck.  The regular deck wasn't open since they are doing some work up there so we went to one that was 4 or so floors below.  After we made it back down to the ground, we decided we just couldn't get enough of great views, so we made our way up to the Hancock building, which also has an observatory.  So great.  Honestly, we liked the Hancock much better.  They had an audio tour included with admission and the views were better.  If you ever go to Chicago and you can only do one of the 2, this is the one to do. That being said, the Sears Tower's regular observation deck was closed because they are building (and are very soon to complete) a glass deck that you can walk out on and look down on the city through the glass.  That could be really cool.  After coming down from Hancock, we walked down the Magnificent Mile, people watched, walked in a few stores, and just enjoyed some of the Chicago sights.  We wrapped up the day by hopping the train to our hotel, which was about 40 minutes outside of the city.  The train ride to the hotel was not bad at all, and we got a real deal on the hotel so we figured it was worth the commute.

More Chicago trip updates and pictures to follow.