With winter coming in and out of the lake area, sometimes a trip for a day isn’t enough of a getaway. Why not try a weekend trip?
Most people don’t think of taking a winter holiday to Chicago, but then most people miss out on the opportunity to take in a variety of theater, wonderful museums and an almost limitless number of good restaurants. Not to mention ice skating in Millennium Park. And if you’re there in February, a Winter Festival.
The nation’s fourth-largest city, Chicago is full of people who love their hometown. “You’re just visiting?” asks the cabbie — or the store clerk — or someone at a nearby restaurant table. “Well, here’s something you shouldn’t miss…”
Even in the wintertime, it’s a welcoming place with many things to do. And since my husband and I don’t like to leave the Lake of the Ozarks in the spring, summer, or fall because of all the many things to do here, we get our “city fixes” in the wintertime. For people like us, who live at the Lake, a big-city weekend is just the thing, and Chicago is the biggest city within a day’s drive.
Getting there
Chicago is eight hours by car from the Lake. Take U.S. 54 north to Interstate-70 to Interstate-55 at St. Louis then 300 miles through the Illinois cornfields.
But since this is to be a “vacation visit,” there’s an easier, more fun way. Take the train. Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner leaves the Jefferson City depot at 10:33 every morning, getting into St. Louis about 1:10 p.m. At 3 p.m. the Lincoln Service departs St. Louis for Chicago, arriving at Chicago’s Union Station at 8:40 p.m. The coach seats are comfortable, lean back and have plugs for computers. Both trains have snack cars for coffee, sandwiches and the like. And the cost is only $41 one-way (with a 10 percent discount for Seniors). Even better, Chicago’s Union Station is right downtown, just a short cab ride from most of the tourist hotels. And in the winter there’s no worry about slick roads or delayed flights.
Once you’re there
Chicago is known for shopping and sports, of course, but it’s a city full of things to see, do, and digest. Since most visitors stay downtown, nothing is very far away – a short cab ride if it’s very cold, or, for the braver, a bus or the fabled El can take you where you want to go in a very few minutes.
Museums
When my friend, John, was a little boy growing up in Chicago, he called his favorite place “The Museum of Science and Interesting.” Today, the Museum of Science and Industry on the city’s south shore near the University of Chicago is still one of the most interesting places to take kids – or to go alone. It has a Fairy Castle, a German World War II submarine and a coal mine that a person can actually go into – and hundreds of buttons to push in exhibits as varied as the Henry Crown Space Center; the chance to learn about genetics and watch baby chicks hatching; one of the first streamlined passenger trains; and an exhibit that takes you “inside” the internet. In mid-March, when the new large-scale Science Storms exhibit opens, visitors will be able to get caught up in forces of nature as they are ringside to recreations of lightning, tornados, fires, tsunamis, avalanches and more. (Msichicago.org).
Closer to downtown, the city’s “museum campus” on the edge of Lake Michigan includes the Shedd Aquarium where its penguin population is relishing the cold weather, the Adler planetarium, and the fabled Field Museum with Sue the Dinosaur (the most complete tyrannosaurus rex skeleton anywhere). (fieldmuseum.org)
Not far away on Michigan Avenue is the Chicago Art Institute, which houses the nation’s foremost collection of impressionist paintings – along with thousands of other artifacts and pieces of art. What’s getting attention right now, however, is the magnificent Modern Wing, which opened last summer, itself worth a visit. (artic.edu)
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