Journey On

Admittingly I would shy away from a trip that would include a layover. My old mantra was let us just get where we are going so that the adventure can begin. Why oh why would you waste time. The thought of sitting in an airport waiting room with a giant pool of hard seats and hospital-style T.V.’s seems extremely unappealing. But wait there is a flip side and I have seen the light. The wonderful possibility of maximizing your trip by adding on experiences as a result of a layover. Yes, maximize your trip with layovers. No matter if the trip is long or short. Let the adventure begin sooner and later. 

Take our recent trip that included two layovers in addition to our featured destination. That’s right two layovers. Our hometown airport to Chicago for 22 hours; Costa Rica for 5 days then Dallas, Texas for a 18-hour layover. An important note to make is that each of these airports are connected to easy transport into the heart of their prospective cities.

In Chicago, the CTA; Chicago Transit Authority has easy rail transport to downtown Chicago and its surrounding area. We easily strolled through the airport to CTA and on the blue line train to State/Lake Street for a visit to the State Theater. Next, we leisurely walked the town to Millennial Park, the famous Bean, Crown Fountain, Riverwalk, and the Navy Pier for a lake cruise. Yes, we included all of this on our layover visit.

On our return trip from Costa Rica, our 18-hour layover stop was in Dallas, Texas where we discovered the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system. DART has accessible and inexpensive ways to travel between DFW and downtown Dallas. After taking the airport shuttle bus we caught the orange line from Terminal A.  A single-ride fare is $2.50 a DART local day pass is $6.00 and is good for unlimited rides on all DART buses and DART Rail.

After catching the orange line train, we headed to Akard station to the AT&T discovery district where there was a mix of nightlife, art, tech, business, foodie heaven, and a load of unexpected time-consuming fun.  I laugh now; however, we were so immersed with activities that it left us scrambling to get back to the airport for our 4:45 am flight.

Yep, visiting two cities, and one country in 7 days feels a bit heroic. The desire to tap someone and say do you know what I did last week is comically compelling, yet I hold my tongue in humility and appreciate how we maximized our trip with layovers.