Chicago, Hi & Bye (1) --- Before the trip

Actually, I have been "dreaming" for the trip for a long time but for the reason of no place to stay at night I put it down. Only until one day a friend of mine here happened to talk about the hostel she has spent a night at that I can take the dream into realty to consideration finally.
So, first I want to talk about the hostel. It is like a place specially provided to the young travellers who don't have much money and willing to share a room with others to make friends with each other. That is the idea. At first, I was a little worried about the condition of the room and roommates. However, when I check in there is no anxiety any more. Here are some photos I took in my room:




the apartment contains four sleeping rooms each can hold two people and a rest room a shower room and also a living room for commen use. Very clean, convenient and comfortable. This is the view of my sleeping room:



So, basically hostel is a pretty good option for our students. And you can make reservation before your trip to make everything easy. Just type "hostel" and the destination in google you can find what you want : )

Now, talk about the transportation. I choose to take trains because the railway station locates in downtown which makes it much easier for our tour and it is cheap and doesn't take a very long time, only four hours. Interestingly is the difference in the time zone between Chicago and Michigan. So according to that it took us three hours to go and five hours to come back.

I made a reservation on line (at Amtrak) first and picked up the tickets at the station.


For in the city, there are many options to take and all of them are very convenient. The subway in Chicago is very developed. However, we didn't get the chance to try it this time. Because the interests we want to visit this time are almost all in the downtown so we can just walk or take buses. There is a website helps you to make your travel plans by bus much easier:
www.yourcta.com

on the bus:



make sure to take the time for transport when planing your trip and leave some time for emergency please. We almost missed our train when we went back though we have left one hour for the time on road already. There always got something out of your plans however perfect it is. It is lucky of us to catch a taxi after running and looking for half an hour. One more thing: do not forget to give tips when you get out of a taxi. ^_^

Another tips: If you want to save money, you can have lunch in the signiture room of John Hancock Observatory without pay for the fee of tour. The view is almost the same and the lunch is not too expensive. Don't forget to make a reservation first.

Sorry for that some photos are not in the right way~