According to my geeky USA by Rail book, the California Zephyr is one of the world’s great train lines. It takes 2.5 days to cross the 2,438 miles (3,922km) from Chicago to San Francisco, spanning 3 time zones, passing through Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno and Sacramento.

You might think it’s a bit crazy to sit on a train for well over 50 hours when I could have flown in less than 10% of the time. But by far this has been the best train journey I’ve done in my life. The scenery is gorgeous and the trains not to bad either. The seats are comfortable and recline back with a footrest that comes out and you get about 3 foot legroom between you and the seat in front. There is a dining car for proper sit down meals with table service, there is a lounge car selling snacks and drinks and an observation car with huge windows and seats facing outwards. Sleeping on the train takes some practice, but it’s not too bad especially if you can get a double seat to yourself.

On the way I’ve travelled through Leafy towns, prairies, deserts, ghost towns, mountains, forests and canyons. The highlight was following the Colorado River from Denver to the state Utah state line. The conductor’s voice kept popping up on the PA with titbits of trivia about the local landmarks w and wildlife. Apparently there where bears running around, but I didn’t see them.

The windows of the train are quite scratched and when the sun shines on them it makes it difficult to take photos through, so apologies for the blurry bits and poor quality of some of the photographs.
I’m really glad I made the decision to take the train over flying and hope I get the chance to do it again sometime.

I’m just heading into San Francisco now, where I’m staying for 6 nights so should be a little bit less hectic than the last few places I’ve been to.

I arrived in Chicago early this morning and wasn’t able to check in to the hostel until 3pm. Luckily a couple of blocks away the city’s annual Columbus Day Parade was happening to keep me busy for a few hours. It’s organised by the Italian American communities and basically consisted of all the local school marching bands and a few local business putting on floats.

Chicago is a clean friendly unpretentious New York. I’d choose Chicago over New York any day.
After the parade (see previous post) I went to the Navy Pier which about a mile of funfair, theatres, restaurants and boat tour operators, unfortunately just as I got there everything was closing so I just had a nice quiet walk along the pier anyway.

The following morning on the recommendation of one of hostel staff I headed down to the Millennium Park. Parts of the park are still being built, but the bits that are finished look really smart and modern. It has a huge area where I guess they hold music concerts and in the centre of the park is a huge metallic bean. I’m not sure what the significance of the bean is, but it looks quite impressive. If you stand directly underneath you can see lots of reflections of yourself.

In the afternoon I visited the Museum of Contemporary Photography then got the metro down to the Museum of science and Industry. I love science museums, and this has to be one the best one’s I’ve visited. There are about 20 different exhibitions on ranging from Space exploration (which includes the real Apollo 8 landing capsule, to a mock up of the inside of a warship. It also has real submarine inside, but that cost extra.

The Chicago H.I. (Hostel International) is also one of the best hostels I’ve stayed in, it’s a bit shabby around the edges, but the staff where really friendly and they had a lot of organised activities, like free ice-cream on a Tuesday afternoon. That evening there was an organised trip to a bar called the Map Room. This is a bar in one of the suburbs of Chicago with an international theme; it’s got about 20 international draft beers and well over 100 bottles beers. Every Tuesday they invite a local restaurant to come over cater for the evening and if you buy two drinks you can eat for free. On the night I went they were serving Filipino food, I’m not sure what it was I was eating, but there was defiantly pork rice and some sort of Pasty. There was also a desert of “purple cake” which strangely was served on the same plate as the main course.

Wednesday morning was spent with a hangover in the Laundry. My train left a 2pm so I couldn’t really fit anything else in. I’m currently winding my way through the Rocky Mountains, 24 hours into the 54 hour journey to San Francisco. I’ll write another post about it.