Springfield Illinois
Trip Dates
May 1 - May 3rd 2019
How I Got There
I was in Chicago for business, and I took the Amtrak from Chicago to Springfield. The train ride was similar to the one I took a few years ago from Indianapolis to Chicago, except we got off to a bumpy start and it took nearly two hours to get out of Chicago proper.
Where I Stayed
There is no Marriott in Springfield. I ended up staying in the tallest building in the city at the Wyndham. The hotel was a bit dated, but there was an excellent restaurant on the roof with panoramic views of the city.
How I Got Around
Downtown Springfield is pretty walkable, so I walked. I took a bus here and there, and also took an occasional Uber.
What I Did
After a bumpy start out of Chicago I arrived in the afternoon and was able to check in early to the hotel. After dropping my things off, I explored downtown. I visited the old statehouse, Lincoln museum and presidential library, and Union Station. Afterwards, I got dinner at Nick and Nino's steakhouse at the top of the hotel and it was excellent, especially compared to my microwaved cheeseburger on Amtrak earlier that day.
The next day I explored Lincoln's old neighborhood, which has been preserved as a National Park. I walked down to the State Capitol and after touring the interior, visited the Illinois history museum.
On my last day, I didn't do anything too notable. I checked off a few more Lincoln themed spots such as the old railroad station that he left from when he became president. I spent the afternoon working from the Library and then made my way to Springfield airport for my flight back to San Francisco.
What Was The Fuss
Two words – Abraham Lincoln.

I've learned throughout my travels so far that every state in the Union claims Abraham Lincoln as their own. Springfield takes this to a whole new level. Their entire economy is essentially "Lincoln lived here for a while".
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- The Software Essays that Shaped Me from Refactoring English
- Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
- Skip the Next iPhone from Articles on Jose M.
- Have smart glasses finally hit an inflection point? from The Torment Nexus
- The McPhee method from the jsomers.net blog
- Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Just a Little More Context Bro, I Promise, and It’ll Fix Everything from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Pluralistic: Carl Hiaasen's 'Fever Beach' (21 Oct 2025)
Today's links Carl Hiaasen's 'Fever Beach': If you didn't laugh, you'd have to cry. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Scary Godmother; Nightvale novel; The war on Worker's Comp; Cadillac's murdermo…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow October 21, 202510 pointless facts about me
Found on Kev’s blog and originally started by Dave, here are my answers to this fun blog challenge: Do you floss your teeth? Sometimes. I’d say maybe a few times a week? I’m terrible at being consistent, and that includes flossing regularly. Tea, co…
via Manuel Moreale — Everything Feed October 21, 2025Getting started with simple CSS View Transitions
There's (yet another) new piece of CSS to learn! Hurrah! Way back in 2011, jQuery mobile introduced the web to page-change animations. Clicking on a link would make your high-tech Nokia display a cool page-flip as you navigated from one page of a web…
via Terence Eden’s Blog October 21, 2025Generated by openring