Long Time No Travel, Chicago ed.
Published:
After I moved to Illinois to start my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I didn’t have go to as many places as before due to all to work I was responsible for. So, when the winter break came, my friends and I decided to have to travel somewhere together, and we chose Chicago, the city that is quite close for Emma and me (but definitely not true for Net and Bonus.) We stayed in Chicago for 9 days renting an airbnb near Western train station. Just like when we traveled to NYC, we decided to buy a city pass so we didn’t have to plan much each day.
The first place we went to was Christkindlmarket, which is a German Christmas market near the Union station. We stored our baggages at the station and walked for 15 minutes to the market. There was a huge crowd, so we didn’t get to enjoy much of it, but it was lovely to see all kinds of Chirstmas ornaments there.
After that we took a train to our airbnb, which is close to Western station on the blue line. We decided that a 7-day pass would be most efficient for us, so we each bought one. (Each ride costs 2.5 dollars, but the pass is only 15 dollar!) However, with all the baggages, when we dropped off at Western, we couldn’t really walk to our house, so we called an uber. To our surprise, the house is much bigger than we expected, and there are 2 floors! Since that day was Christmas’s eve, most restaurany were closed, so we order Domino’s. We carefully chose the cheapest one, and it turned out even better because we got one medium cheese pizza for free due to the holidays promotion! On the next day, which was Christmas, we didn’t do anything much because most tourist attractions were closed, so we wen to the 606 trailhead-an overpass that was built to be a running trail.
December 26 marked the day that our trip actually began as we first used our city pass to visit Field museum. The museum was huge, but I don’t recall which is bigger this one or the musuem of nature and science in NYC. We got the tickets for all fours special exhibitions due to the city pass, and they were awesome. The four exhibitions were including: the underground adventure, where they scale up tiny creatures underground; Tang, Chinese cultures and antiques; Wild colors, experiencing colors in nature; and biomechanics, where they explain how each movement in nature executed.
On Dec 27, we didn’t actually do much as I had to make a UK Visa in order to visit my boyfriend in England, so we just went to have some dimsum in Chinatown after ward. However, on the next day, we were very excited to go to Shedd aquarium as we had never been to an aquarium for so long. Unfortunately, we forgot to book a ticket!! There was a long line coming out of the aquarium, and it started to snow, so we stopped at a coffee shop to plan it over. (Note, the coffee shop we went to named sweet beans, and it served Asian bakery. highly recommended!) After a cup of tea and buns, we decided to go to the museum of science and industry. The museum didn’t impress us much as most exhibitions were far less interactive than Field’s. Still, we got to see the university of Chicago while travelling there.
Skydeck! On Dec 29, we used our pass to visit Skydeck which is the 103th floor of Willis tower. The view was wonderful. I like this place better than Empire state because we don’t have to go out and beat the freezing wind. After that, we went to the cloud gate, which is also known as the bean! And that marked the end of the day—just kidding.
The reason that our plan that day was so short was that we needed a hotpot so bad! After visiting beautiful places in downtown, we went straight to Happy Lamb Hotpot in Chinatown. It was sooo good. (as you can see in the picture below)
December 30: here comes the aquarium! We finally got to visit Shedd aqurium. The place was huge, and if one looks up on the internet, Shedd is like the 7th biggest aqurium in the world. There were tons of exhibitions in there, from Amazon river to north pole and back to Mekong river. The beluga whales show was totally totally recommended. All the creatures seemed happy and well taken care of. Net also got an octopus stuff animal back with her.
Last but not least, we used our city pass on the Art Institute of Chicago! (The pass was $111 including tax and can be used for 5 places) Again, it was huge and impossible to walk through everything, so we just went to see pieces that we liked. There are a lot of famous paintings here, e.g. those from van Gogh, Claude Monet, salvador dali, Picasso, and more. Just like when we visited any museum, we went to the store and bought some mesuem mechandise. They are affordable and very cute!
And that was our trip to Chicago. While we did a lot of travelling, what was better was that we got to spend our time together after the first semester of grad school. It was so relaxing and carefree. We watched a lot of TV shows, cooked frozen food, had midnight snacks, sang, and danced. Having friends that we are comfortable to share our personal life with feels incredible. I hope we get to see each other again!
After we found out that there are some flights from Willard (a regional airport in Champaign) that are inexpensive, we started flying out from here instaead of Chicago. We got a really good price of plane tickets to Seattle, so we decided to go to more national parks! The two parks that we visited were Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. We thought about going to North Cascade as well, but the time was limited so we planned to visit there next time. Visiting these two popular national parks in the fall was such a good choice–less crowd, nice weather, and fall foliage!
Midwest surprisingly offers us many national parks to visit all year round. One of the national parks near Illinois is the Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, Kentucky. We rented a car from Champaign and drove around 5 hours, excluding small stops in Indiana. We had never been to Kentucky before, and we believe that not many international students had been there. Plus, this was the first time we visited a cave in the US, and we start with the world’s longest known cave system!
We’d been thinking of visiting South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Badlands national park for almost a year. Then an opportunity came when one of our friends gave us a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Delta. We did not hestitate even a bit in buying two tickets for a round trip from Chicago to Rapid City, SD. Although it was an impulsive trip, we had a lot of fun observing the wildlife in the great plains of South Dakota and North Dakota.
Although Poy graduated from the Scripps-Oxford joint Ph.D. program in Biochemistry for half a year and already started working at UIUC as a post-doctoral researcher, his graduation ceremony was held way later in May 2024. His family also came from Thailand to attend his graduation ceremony in San Diego. We then spent over a week afterward traveling around the west coast, including California, Arizona, and Nevada. It was my first time (and his family’s first time) doing a road trip in the west coast. We enjoyed a huge variety of natural wonders that the west coast has to offer.