Sights to See: Madison, WI and Chicago!
What a difference a day makes. Today’s drives were short stints compared to yesterday’s monster day so we had a good chance to sleep in and check out downtown Cedar Falls, Iowa before getting on the road. We headed out towards Madison, WI to have lunch at Lazy Jane’s Cafe. Madison looked like the quintensential college town and the cafe lunch was pretty good. Norma has been having spotty luck with her lunch picks but finally found some good soup to eat.
We then had a short drive over to Chicago (or so we thought) What should’ve been 2 hours turned to 4 with Chicago traffic on the Kennedy Expressway. Reminded me of being on the Cross-Bronx in the middle of rush hour in NYC.. plain murderous. We go to our hotel a lttle later than planned but headed right out to go sight-see.
First on the list was Portillo’s World Famous Hot Dogs and the place did not dissapoint. I’m a plain kinda guy for hot dogs but Norma loved the tomato, pickle and other stuff they put on a traditional Chicago-style dog. After dinner we taxi’d over to the Navy Pier to take a stroll through the famous Chicago landmark. It was a bit windy and cold for Mateo as he fell asleep in the carrier Mommy had him in but the Pier was definitely fun and there was lots to do. It is like a mini-theme park right in the heart of the city.
We didn’t stay too late as we had to wake up early for our final leg of the trip so we shot back up town to our hotel. We did notice the neighborhood around the hotel reminded us of the classic brownstones we saw in New York City – to be sure there are no broke people living in those neighborhoods.
More pics of Day 6 here..