{"id":11616,"date":"2015-09-22T17:37:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T17:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/?p=11616"},"modified":"2015-09-22T17:37:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T17:37:12","slug":"wales-day-1-saturday-august-1-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wales-2015\/wales-day-1-saturday-august-1-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales Day 1- Saturday, August 1, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

it’s convenient that the first day of our trip coincided with the first day of the month.<\/p>\n

we got up early cause the train was going to leave at 9:30 SHARP.<\/p>\n

First, we had to pet the kitties a little more.\u00a0 so sad to be leaving them for five weeks!\u00a0 but at least they had no idea we were leaving, plus they were going to be in very good hands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

luckily, i kept checking the train status because it was later, and later…and later still.<\/p>\n

we finally loaded our many, many bags in mom’s car and went to the train station.\u00a0 because we weren’t going to ride on any airplanes, we could take whatever we wanted.\u00a0 so i went overboard with that\u00a0 oooooverboard.\u00a0 too many clothes, too much jewelry to wear with fancy dresses on the Queen Mary, too much stuff, too much.\u00a0 people kept saying PACK LIGHT, and i know to pack light….but i went a little crazy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

kevin brought many, many snacks to eat while walking.\u00a0 many fig bars and granola bars and energy bars and all kinds of stuff…but this was good, because we ended eating almost all of it!<\/p>\n

the train finally left about 11:00, and it was a nice ride up to chicago.\u00a0 i was still pretty wound up from all the preparing and planning and over-packing i’d been doing forever, it seemed like.<\/p>\n

we got into Chicago at around 3:00, and our train bound for NYC wasn’t going to leave til about 8:30.\u00a0 We were able to leave all our bags at the sleeper-car lounge, which was great, but we decided we didn’t want to check any bags – as we got off the train in chicago, we walked past one of the open train cars, which was piles with a massive heap of luggage, as though it had all just been randomly thrown together.\u00a0 we didn’t want that.<\/p>\n

We thought we’d walk down to the Art Institute, and down to the water.\u00a0 a nice and relaxing walk.<\/p>\n

well.\u00a0 as we walked toward the lake, there were more and more people.\u00a0 to be expected, cause it’s a big city.\u00a0 but then, more and more and OH MY GOD SO MANY PEOPLE EVERYWHERE WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON???!!!<\/p>\n

by the time we reached the Art Institute the crowds were so thick that it was hard to stay together and kevin hates crowds anyway and i’m not so fond of them.\u00a0 we spotted a sign – this was LOLLAPALOOZA<\/a>!\u00a0 good grief.<\/p>\n

it’s a huge musical festival held every year in chicago; i think it lasts three days, TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY.\u00a0 nonstop music.\u00a0 so that’s why the crowd was mostly made up of people in their 20s.<\/p>\n

ugh.<\/p>\n

we struggled up michigan avenue, as a big white limo van pulled up and three photographers\/videographers got out.\u00a0 We stopped, because i thought maybe it would be a celebrity.<\/p>\n

nope.\u00a0 an hispanic girl who looked like she was in her teens got out, wearing a really poufy long bright blue dress and a tiara.\u00a0 she was followed by a guy dressed up, wearing a matching blue bowtie, then a gaggle of girls in shorter bright magenta dresses, then there were some more guys.<\/p>\n

was it a wedding?<\/p>\n

I finally asked one of the photographers – not a wedding, a Quinceanera celebration!\u00a0 a 15-year old party.\u00a0 and a very expensive one.<\/p>\n

We continued to straggle up michigan avenue as it got hotter and hotter, and finally sat in a little dog park surrounded by towering condos just north of the river.\u00a0 it was fun to watch the dogs.\u00a0 after a whole lot of sitting as i scrolled through my phone looking up the lineup for lollapalooza – we had missed paul mccartney – we got a little food at a nearby grocery store, then started making our way back to the train station.<\/p>\n

we strolled along the river walk, and though it was crowded, it wasn’t insane like the music fest.\u00a0 here’s one of the big boats in the river.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and then we saw a whole boat of guys enjoying the water.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

we both took photos of this bridge where the river turned north, and i was going to look it up on my phone, but it didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

we got back to the train station, and some fancy event was happening in another part of the station.\u00a0 i caught this shot just as this car was entering – they were having a lot of difficulty trying to fit it through the doors.\u00a0 i rushed back to our lounge area to tell kevin so he could see it, but by the time he got there, the doors had closed.\u00a0 oh well; we’d probably see other interesting things on our trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

the train left from chicago, so it was on time, and we struggled to get our bags into our teeny tiny sleeping car.\u00a0 when we’d done this trip before, we’d been able to store our bags outside our room, but this wasn’t the case.\u00a0 there was a tiny amount of space up by the top bunk, but no place for our two gigantic bags.<\/p>\n

the porter, also named kevin, grilled us about why we didn’t check our bags, and then he was going to give us a “deal” – he was going to upgrade us to a bigger cabin for 150 bucks in cash.\u00a0 we agreed, happy to pay so we wouldn’t be smothered by our luggage, but then the guy delivered the sad news that a family had boarded last minute and needed the room.<\/p>\n

dang.<\/p>\n

here’s kevin with my huge suitcase next to him – he slept on the bottom bunk, which was narrow on one end.\u00a0 he slept with his head at the narrow end because he didn’t want to have the suitcase right next to his head, and fall and crush his head in the middle of the night.\u00a0 better legs crushed rather than head.<\/p>\n

\"\"

tiny sleeping car!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

slightly crazed at this point<\/p><\/div>\n

we made the most of it and sorted things out, and had a really good night’s sleep.<\/p>\n

whew, made it through the first day.<\/p>\n

ok then,<\/p>\n

g.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

it’s convenient that the first day of our trip coincided with the first day of the month. we got up early cause the train was going to leave at 9:30 SHARP. First, we had to pet the kitties a little more.\u00a0 so sad to be leaving them for five weeks!\u00a0 but at least they had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[110,111,39,112,35],"class_list":["post-11616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wales-2015","tag-amtrak","tag-chicago","tag-kevin","tag-lollapalooza","tag-winnie"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-31m","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}