As you may have heard, a few weekends ago Hope offered a Chicago trip for students to take charter buses into the city.
My friends and I unfortunately missed out on that — by the time we went to sign up, all the seats were taken — so, we did some extra investigating to try to figure out a different way to get into the city.
One of our close friends mentioned there’s a train that leaves Michigan City, Indiana, and goes into downtown Chicago. Not only that, but a one-way ticket costs $8.50, which we determined to be a relatively good deal. We initially considered driving all the way there, but the relieving part of the half-train/half-car expedition was the avoidance of downtown traffic, which was a blessing in the end.
On a side note, there’s also a train that goes to Chicago from Holland, (right down the street from Hope, actually!) which is also extremely useful — the times it left and returned just didn’t work for us this trip — but we definitely plan to use it in the future.
We drove the hour-and-a-half to Michigan City from Hope on Saturday afternoon and hopped onto the train headed for Millenium Park.
Once we got to the city, we had a blast wandering through Millenium Park, walking down Michigan Avenue, and seeing Macy’s all decked out for Christmas. We took the escalator up 8 floors of the department store — mostly just to say we did — but unfortunately, as poor college students, we all walked out empty-handed.
Not for long, though. We found a delicious pizza place — of which I cannot remember the name of — and consumed a giant cheese deep-dish pizza, a Chicago specialty.
R to L: Cullen, Sarah, me, Eric, and Josh.
Overall, it was a great trip and a fun experience to take a break from weekend campus life (even though there’s tons of fun things to do around here on the weekends, too!)
Want more information about the different ways to travel off-campus? Any other questions, comments, or concerns about anything to do with Hope College? Feel free to tweet at me @hopesophie17 on Twitter or send me an email at sophie.guetzko@hope.edu.