Chi-town in a day

Day 29
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Sightseeing in Chicago

Add Chicago, home to 2.9 million people (city) and 10 million people (metro area), to the list of great American cities. We were very impressed. Of course beautiful weather like that which we had today always makes a better impression on visitors, but aside from that we experienced a vibrant, exciting, vital city that people live in not just commute to. We found Chicagoans to be sophisticated yet folksy. Worldly yet unpretentious.

We rode the “L” Blue Line from O’Hare Airport to the Washington stop, located in “the Loop” a few blocks from Millennium Park. Chicago’s downtown area is known as “The Loop,” which refers to a financial and business district of skyscrapers encircled by elevated (L) train tracks.

Our first stop was Cloud Gate, a shiny, mercury-inspired sculpture made of highly-polished, mirror-like stainless steel that inspires visitors with reflections of people, sky and buildings in Millennium Park. Known to locals as “The Bean,” The underside is concave, allowing underneath access for additional perspectives. Actually, this sculpture serves a wonderful purpose for tourists. It solves the perpetual problem of how to get a photo that includes everyone in a sightseeing party.

Next, we walked up Michigan Avenue’s Miracle Mile, taking in a array of boutiques, shops, department stores and structures sporting world-class architecture. After a quick pizza lunch near the Hancock Tower, we walked along Lakeshore Drive down to the Navy Pier where we took a ride on the 150-foot-tall Ferris wheel. We learned that the world’s first Ferris wheel was established in 1893 on the same sight and was even larger than the one that is there today. From the top of the wheel, we had fantastic views of the lakefront and skyscrapers of the Loop.

We then took a water taxi up the Chicago River to the vicinity of the Willis Tower. In 1900, public works officials successfully completed a massive and highly-innovative engineering project that reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that it emptied into the Mississippi River instead of Lake Michigan. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the river’s banks were developed to encourage mixed use of the riverfront—successfully in our observation. Each year, the Chicago River is dyed green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

After disembarking the boat, we walked a short distance to the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), rode one the fastest (and smoothest, we might add) elevators in the world up 103 floors in sixty seconds to the “Skydeck” and took in spectacular views of the city. Topping out at 1,450 feet, the tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere. From on high, the city’s scale was more impressive than it was on the ground. Elliot said “This is a huge city, huh?”

The tower featured several Plexiglas boxes that had been installed on the west side of the building to provide a greater degree of thrill to jaded top-of-the-world tourists. The boxes included clear floors that were cantilevered outside the building, providing a view straight down more than 1,000 feet. Frank and Elliot posed for a photo that others advised us would be more dramatic if we sat on the transparent floor.

On the way back to the Blue Line station where we joined hundreds of commuters headed from the Loop district back to O’Hare, we passed the origin of Historic Route 66, which begins in Grant Park on Adams Street and stretches to Los Angles. The people on the train were a polite and patient lot that could teach us East Coasters a thing or two about practicing civility. As far as we could tell, “Midwest Nice” had not suffered by a high population density.

Chicago friends Paul and Sherri and their daughter, Jessica, whom we met in a campground in Colorado Springs four years ago, picked us up at our hotel and took us for a wonderful meal at Nonno Pino's Italian Kitchen, one of Chicago’s more than 7,300 restaurants. It was great to see them—wonderful people. If you don’t get a great meal in Chicago, you have no one to blame but yourself!

All in all, it was a great day of sightseeing and socializing in the manic style that Hazzards are famous for.