Chicago City Running Tour
Last month I visited Chicago with N. We had a great visit, tourist-ing it up. We took the requisite Boat Tour (confession: i napped), a Food tour (underwhelming) and even took in a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.
A true highlight for me was my City Running Tour. Last year I was lucky enough to win a free tour from a contest on Racevine. I figured I would use it during one of my NY trips, but when we booked the trip to Chicago I realized this would be a perfect opportunity to take advantage of it. And N was super excited about having a sleep-in.
Marlin picked me up at my hotel at 7AM my first morning in Chicago (8AM Toronto time – so later than I normally sleep!). It was hot, so the rainy weather was pretty soothing. We ran along the river, the lake and then back through Grant Park, Millenium Park and finally to the hotel. A solid 10km.
The first half of the tour was story time – Marlin told me all about Chicago and the grossness that was the river and the world fair and all sorts of other interesting things (N claims we learned some of this on the Boat tour while I slept). Then when we came back through the parks it was photo time! I saw Grant Park, Millenium Park and a number of other landmarks which Marlin documented with photos of me running through them all. It was a fantastic way to see a new city. And [if I had a sense of direction] it [would have] given me a good sense of the layout of the city and where things were 🙂
Marlin was a great guide. He knows a ton about Chicago and is a very interesting person as well. His tour was a highlight of my trip!
The one problem – I was back and hyper at 8:15 and that’s when N’s sleep in ended. Too bad for him!
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September 26th, 2010 at 11:29 am
What a fun way to see the city! Glad it was such a great experience for you!!!
October 3rd, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Congratulations Jen, looks like you had a lot of fun and you are becoming a better runner all the time.