Chicago

After an overnight train from Washington DC, I arrived at the Chicago hostel at 8.30 in the morning, fully expecting to just be able to put my bags in a locker and come back and check-in later. However, I was allowed to check-in there and then, dump my bags in my room and have a shower. The hostel offers a number of activities, one of these happened to be an architectural tour of the city, I decided this was probably a good idea to take, so I could get an idea of the place and what there was to see. 

The tour took us past Chicago’s first skyscraper, The Fisher Building - skyscrapers are designated by the way they are built not how high they are, so the first skyscraper isn’t that tall. We also saw the Monadnock building, Rookery - which features an atrium designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the New Stock Exchange building - with the faceless statue on the top, because no one would be able to see the face, so there was no point adding it, they didn’t know about zoom lenses then apparently. Apart from the buildings, Chicago also has a lot of public art, including Picasso’s Untitled, Miro’s Chicago and Dubuffet’s Monument with Standing Beast. 

After the tour I found myself at the top of Millennium Park, which like many Millennium projects opened a couple of years late. But it features a number of projects by world renowned artists, including Gehry’s BP bridge and Pritzker Pavilion. But my favourite thing was Anish Kapoor’s Bean - it’s a huge, 110 ton silver, shiny bean shaped sculpture which reflects the city skyline, the sky and everyone passing by it. Officially it’s called Cloud Gate, but it’s more commonly known as the Bean. I probably took far too many photos of it, but there was the challenge to try and take a photo without being reflected on the surface, not sure I succeeded in that.

As the cold I had caught on Halloween was beginning to take full effect and I was tired from the train journey I went back to the hostel for a nap. At one point I woke up to mumble a croaky hello to someone and promptly fell back to sleep. A few hours later I found out that that someone was Molly, a very friendly Texan, after meeting Molly, the tourist things to do in Chicago took on a different tack. We went out that night with a bunch of Irish farmers and a London playwright who we met at the hostel, to a couple of bars and a karaoke bar (no I didn’t subject anyone to my singing). Apart from missing our stop to get home and spending far too long on a freezing cold platform waiting for a train in the opposite direction, we had a great night.

The next day we all met up again and we walked in the very warm sunshine along the side of the lake to Navy Pier. Navy Pier has a Ferris Wheel, restaurants and various attractions, but what caught peoples' eyes were the bikes which held 4 people. A deal was struck and 20 minutes later we were riding out along the North Lake Shore Drive of Lake Michigan, trying not to hit anyone or fall into the lake. Yes, we did cause a lot of chaos, but most people just laughed at us, I’m still sure it was OK to ride over the bridge, not sure on the underpass or the steps, but otherwise I’m certain we didn’t do anything too wrong, plus we had lots of fun and seemed to entertain passers-by too.

Apparently the peddling made people hungry, being the official photographer I couldn’t peddle and take photos, so wasn’t quite as hungry or tired as everyone else! So we went to Giordano’s for Chicago Pizza Pie, I had a caesar salad (I hate tomatoes) but tried a small bit of pie, which was incredibly filling, even with the tomato scraped off, plus it seemed more cheese than anything else. The pie crust actually seemed to be a shortcrust cheese pastry rather than a traditional dough, it was all rather different and really no relation to pizzas I’ve had before. That night we headed out to an Irish bar - the drinks were very cheap, it had a good reputation, so we went, even if it felt a bit weird going to an Irish bar with a bunch of Irish people in Chicago. In fact it was more an American sports bar that sold Guinness, than an Irish bar.

The following morning started slowly, my cold was getting worse - late nights and alcohol probably not helping - but I managed to trudge up to the Cultural Center, which is housed in the Old Post Office. The center has two domes which were designed by Tiffany. One being more elaborate than the other and worth $35 million, it was beautiful and showed how much wealth the city must have had back in the day to afford such art in a post office.

For my final culinary Chicago adventure I decided to get the Blue Line north to Doug’s Dogs. These are meant to be the hot dogs of Chicago, not for being ‘fully loaded’ but because they are gourmet hot dogs, with versions like duck, ginger and hoisin or foie gras, truffle and something else. Unfortunately by the time I found the place, which was a fair bit out of down town, my cold was going into full blown I will be ill mode. It didn’t help that the queue to get in was long and not moving and as I stood there with the shivers and sweats, I realised that the gourmet hot dogs weren’t on my menu that day, I just couldn’t stand there any longer waiting without collapsing. So unfortunately I trudged back to the Blue Line and downtown, I’ll just have to go back to Chicago to try these speciality hot dogs. Being ill also meant that going up the Willis (Sears) Tower wasn’t going to happen, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed in, in case they thought I was suffering from Swine Flu - they’re very paranoid about it here.

The next day it was off to the train station to pick up the Megabus to Indiana - I did get to see the famous Route 66 sign as I passed by it on the bus.

Fortunately or unfortunately, due to the train schedules when I return from Indiana I have a few hours wait in Chicago, so I can then ‘do’ the Willis Tower - got to get my world’s tallest buildings in if I can!

Next Stop: Muncie, Indiana