My flight from White Plains arrived prior to 8am, while my flight to Barcelona was departing a 6:40pm. While I certainly enjoy some time to relax in the airport lounge prior to a flight, 10 hours is far beyond my limits. Given that my girlfriend had never actually been to Chicago other than during layovers, it made it a no brainer for me to meet her downtown to do some sightseeing.

What this meant for me was hopping off the plane, taking a quick walk to the transportation area, and taking a 30-minute ride on the Blue Line into the city to rendezvous with my girlfriend who spent the night with a friend in the Ukrainian Village area of the city. This was my first time taking public transit to or from O'Hare and I was impressed at how easy it was. But I also spent 4 years in Los Angeles for undergrad so my perception of airport transport is admittedly quite skewed.

Once we met up, we hopped back on the Blue Line to head closer to the Riverwalk and grab some breakfast. We settled on Goddess and the Baker, a Chicago-area chain that I had been to before and thought was pretty decent. I ordered a breakfast platter, while my girlfriend got some toast. Both were unremarkable.
Once satiated, we began to do some sight-seeing. Unfortunately, for the first few hours, we were saddled with our luggage. Prior to our trip, I learned that, unlike in many airports in Europe, there was no luggage storage on the airport premises or adjacent to the terminal. I certainly wasn't going to attempt to short check my bag, so were stuck with our luggage until the Union Station bag storage opened at 10am.


Funny seeing this Lithuanian flag downtown given where we were heading on this trip.

At 10am, we made our way to Union Station and parted with the $40 that they charge for two bags for those not traveling on Amtrak. Having shed quite a bit of weight, we continued to walk around with renewed vigor.





With the afternoon marching on, we decided to do a cruise around Lake Michigan. For $32.50 per person for an hour, we thought that this was well worth it, providing some really great views of the city as well as some nice historical context via the speaker system.




About midway through the cruise, we were treated to a fleet of army helicopters flying over us for a military exercise.

By the time the boat tour ended, it was already almost 3pm so we headed to the airport via Uber.