Chicago...it's My Kind of Town

Back in the early spring I approached my mom and asked something like, "if the planets align and the stars connect, do you want to take a trip this fall?"  She said yes and we got to planning.  Originally we were set for Arkansas to do some family history.  But she didn't seem too excited about that so we listed off some places that we still wanted to go in our lifetimes (this was a fun conversation).  I did a little research and finally suggested Chicago.  We could do some fun things there but also do some family history.  Win, win!  So we flew in from our separate locations and met at the airport.  I flew in first so I took the time to drive out to a local cemetery to visit some relatives.  That was very nice and I enjoyed "meeting" them.  For the first three days we stayed in suburban Chicago.  It took about 45 minutes to drive into the city but we were okay with that.

We visited the Jane Adams Hull House, one of the last two remaining buildings of her large community from the late 1800s.  The rest of the community was torn down in the 60s to build the University of Illinois, Chicago.  It was an interesting museum and we were there for about 2 hours.

We also went on an architectural tour on the Chicago River.  They basically tell you about the skyscrapers and point out things to look for.  They also discussed some of the history of the buildings and the who's who of architecture there.  It was very interesting though your neck might get a crick in it from looking up all the time.  

Here is the Wrigley building with the river and bridge.  It was one of my favorite buildings.

Here is the Trump Tower with the Wrigley building.

The Willis Tower, more commonly known as Sear's Tower...it's the tall, black one.

The view from Lake Michigan as we turned around to head back to "port."

Driving around Chicago was not a fun experience.  Driving in the barrio and ghetto of Chicago was even less fun.  As all of you know, when you are driving around in a new place and don't know where anything is, you often miss your destination and have to navigate the one way streets to get back there to (a) find parking and (b) attend your destination.   In the middle of trying to get to the library (see below) we stumbled across this fountain, called the Buckingham Memorial Fountain.  It plays a "show" with music and timed bursts of water and lights at night.  Here is a sample of what we saw.

  

Then we took a weekend detour to Indiana, to be discussed in another blog post.  When we got back to Chicago, we stayed right downtown, which was nice even though expensive.

We went to Navy Pier, a top tourist destination.  I was hoping to get my souvenirs of Chicago here and I was successful.  I also wanted to go because there was a stained glass museum.  I didn't know it was basically just the "wall art" for the building itself and not a dedicated museum, but it was cool and I'm glad we went.  Here is a colorful example.  

The lighthouse from Navy Pier.  We also saw and spoke with a large group of sister missionaries who were on their preparation day at Navy Pier.  That was fun. 

I don't know how many of you know this (probably only my husband) but I really like Jake Gyllenhaal.  I get teased by my husband about this every so often.  He was in a movie called Source Code in which the Cloud Gate is a prominent feature at the end.  I had to go there.  I wanted to see it for myself...and it was awesome!  I loved how it reflected the city skyline.  I loved how no matter where you took a picture, you were in it somewhere.  I loved that all the tourists were having such a great time enjoying it.  Again, it was awesome!

One thing that I always manage to do is find the library.  I have some sort of sixth sense about it.  So we had to go to the Chicago Public Library which happens to be the largest public library in the United States.  I'm not sure if they were referring to the actual downtown building, which has ten large stories, or if they were referring to the Chicago Public Library system.  In any case, there is an atrium on the tenth floor and here it is.  If I worked here, I'm sure I would visit this atrium often.

And what trip to Chicago wouldn't be complete without a little pizza?  We went to Lou Malnati's for pizza because they had a crustless pizza.  Basically, they made the crust out of mildly seasoned sausage and it somehow congealed together to make a crust you could eat with your hands (albeit greasily).  So there's the "crust," sauce, cheese and toppings.  We ordered it twice while we were there.  Yum!

The first time we went to Lou's I wanted to walk down to the Chicago river to see it at night.  Here it is.  My camera made the sky a little gray.  I assure you it was night and dark.