Hilton Health Club
Naturally we wanted to take a shower after the red eye flight before heading to downtown for the bike tour. There's no shower facilities in the RCC, but luckily there's a health club in the airport Hilton hotel. The day pass costs $15 per person, but we only needed to pay $10 when we showed the Hilton HHonors card. There's also a small swimming pool, and plenty of exercise equipment in the gym, and seems like lots of pilots use the facility.
There's no luggage storage in the airport, and even though our luggage was checked through to Stockholm, we did not want to bring all the carry on (two backpacks) to the bike tour. The nice club attendant made an exception and held a locker for us when we told him we would be back in couple hours.
Hilton Health Club
CTA to downtown
We then got a $5 ticket and took the subway to downtown. A day pass at $6 would have been a better choice if we were to go to more places, but we only needed to take the train ride ($2.5)and back, and one bus transfer ($0.25), so we still had $0.25 left for our next visit to Chicago !
CTA
Chicago Bike Tour
We got off at the Grand station, and quickly found the connecting bus 65 to the bike tour office, just one block from the Navy Pier. The tour started at 9:30am, and we were told it should end before 1:00pm, and the timing should work out just fine for us to catch our 4:30pm plane to Stockholm. This was an excellent tour, and our guide Eddie was extremely funny, and took us to a lot of landmarks that we otherwise would have missed if we tried to navigate Chicago ourselves.
Bike Tours Sign
Bike Tour Orientation
Biking in downtown Chicago
St Michael's Church
The Original Playboy Mansion
Chicago
About two hours into the bike ride, we stopped by a little cafe for a break, and then biked past the beach and back to the office. It was exactly 1pm, and we would be cutting it too close if we waited for the 65 bus. Instead, we took a cab to the nearest Metro station to catch the train back to Ohare.
Northstar
Cab to Metro
Blue train back to Ohare