An Early Departure
Saturday, June 21, 2025
In a surprising turn of events, I’m writing this from Chicago tonight. We thought this would be our last night in Michigan in our log house, but obviously, our plans changed.
We got up and had breakfast with Doug and Janis and then they packed up their car and we all headed over to Aunt Judy’s for a last visit. We chatted for a while and then Doug and Janis said their goodbyes and left for Chicago. Val and I stayed for a while longer and then returned to our house.
When we got back to the house, Val and I wondered what we would do for the rest of the day since we wouldn’t be going to see Mike perform. It had gotten very hot and humid, so we didn’t want to go out anywhere and the idea came up to just go back to Chicago a day early. We had another night left on the house and another day on the rental car, but we were leaving tomorrow on the train and would have to get up early and drive to Chicago, return the rental car and then get to Union Station and that seemed like it might be a little stressful, so we decided to leave early.
We checked online for availability at the LondonHouse where we had stayed Monday night and they did have rooms, but at a pretty inflated price since it was a Saturday night, but we decided, what the hell, and booked it; maybe we could have another dinner on the rooftop.
We quickly packed our bags, got the house ready, and were on our way. There wasn’t much traffic until we got to Chicago and then it was pretty heavy which delayed us a bit. The surface streets of Chicago were pretty busy too, but we found the Alamo Car Rental place without any trouble and the car return was very easy. We thought it might be difficult to flag down a taxi as we weren’t on a very busy street, so we called a cab company and asked for a taxi to pick us up in front of the rental car agency.
Just like Michigan, Chicago was very hot and humid, and we had an uncomfortable wait for our cab. After 15 minutes we began to wonder how long it was going to take, so when a taxi pulled up to drop someone off, we asked if he was available and he took us to the hotel. I’m glad we didn’t wait and we were soon in our hotel room. I got a call from the taxi company saying they would pick us up in ten minutes; we told them to cancel it.
When we arrived at the London House Hotel it was much busier than it had been when we arrived last Monday. After checking in, I asked the concierge if we could get reservations at LH On 21 (the roof top resturant) but she said they were fully booked and very busy so there was a very little chance we could get a table. She did say we could check with the hostess ourselves, but we thought it probably wouldn’t be worth it. Besides that, it was so hot, we thought it might not be comfortable eating outside.
We got to our room and once again it was a very nice corner room, but on a lower floor this time, but that was fine for a last-minute reservation. We relaxed for a while, but we were getting hungry as we had only had a snack since breakfast. We decided to go down to the Land and Lake Kitchen for dinner but opted to eat inside this time because of the heat.
So, as I said at the beginning of this post, we really didn’t expect to be here tonight, but I think it will work out well for us. Instead of having a hectic morning tomorrow, we’ll have an easier time getting to the train.
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