Exploring Chicago without a car

A basic guide for those to whom, like me, the USA is a completely new experience

The Chicago street system
The streets are arranged in a rectangular grid. For the purposes of orientation, street numbers and names are centred on State Street (running north-south) and Madison Street (running east- west). Thus N Illinois runs northwards from Madison, S Illinois southwards from Madison; the same principles apply to east-west streets, so W Lake Street is to the west of State Street.
All property numbering starts from this State/Madison crossroads, so an address of 1001 N Illinois indicates that it is located at the end of the tenth block north of Madison. This is because the first block encountered at the crossroads will have properties numbered from 1 up to a possible 99.

Chicago city center on foot.
Provided you have a town map and/or guide book, reasonable stamina, comfortable shoes and adequate weather, do your exploring on foot and take your time abut it. A very different experience than Paris or London, Chicago city center is much more compact than either and supplies endless delights and surprises. And if you enjoyed the film "The Untouchables", make sure that you go into the main hall of Grand Central Station.

Using public transport
You can buy tickets for unlimited travel valid for one, three or seven days.

Public transport: exploring Chicago by "L" (for elevated) railway
This is the urban railway system, only parts of which are in fact elevated.
In the city centre all of the system is elevated, and it is known as the Union Loop - or Loop, for short. It was constructed in the 1890s. Here (as can be seen in the photo) it runs at about 20 feet above street level.
The Loop is used by five of Chicago's nine urban railway lines.

Public transport: Chicago by bus.
Difficult to know, the one bus line which we used to go to the Science Museum was fine.


ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCES

The yellow School Bus - as featured in many film hijackings
We experienced this - without any hijack - between the city centre and North Western University. The university is on Lake Michigan north of the city, a trip which must have taken almost an hour in each direction. Not to be recommended for people with back problems; do not on any account take a seat in the long overhang behind its rear wheels. You have been warned.

Starbucks
One unforgettable experience for me at North Western University was that of buying a cappuccino coffee at the Starbucks bar in the students' lounge. On ordering it I answered several questions, starting with "regular or large?", followed by several irrelevant refinements of the product. The final query was "wet or dry?"
At that point I had to stare at the server behind the counter, trying to work out whether we were on the same planet. (My immediate preference was for wet, I didn't have any hot water with which to dehydrate a dry version.) His explanation made little sense - it related to the consistency of the milk foam on top of the drink - I played safe and asked for wet. Well, I was really only interested in the coffee, so finally I was allowed to buy a cup.

And I had thought the TV series "Frasier" was satirising the American coffee drinking ritual! (Similar errors have been made by watchers of "Father Ted.")