Chicago, IL: October 4th-6th, 2014 - Hey, I Finally Went to Chicago!

Been talking about visiting Chicago for a long time - certainly since this blog went up, and even in my former life in Greenville, NC, Chicago always held a fascination for me.  Not sure why.  I do love me some cities, but I've been to New York twice - back when I was much younger - and I honestly never liked it that much.  It's just too much city.  For whatever reason, though, I felt that Chicago would be Goldilocks for me.

Cost had always been what prohibited my travel there, but over fall break I finally found my way up.  I left sunny and 70 Louisville to find myself in the mid-40s and rain.  Fantastic!  I resigned myself to the fact that I would, undoubtedly, get sick by the end of the trip, and pressed on.

More companions along for the journey, this time my family.  After settling in to the hotel, we started picking destinations.  There were a few must-dos, but most of those would happen the following day, so for the rest of that afternoon it was sort of whatever we felt like.  Two places had been recommended to me by friends, the first being Shedd Aquarium, so we headed there first.

The line, however, looked like this:

(you can see them through the trees)

Realizing that we would probably run out of time if we stayed in that line, we wandered around to find something else.  The Field Museum had virtually no line whatsoever, so we went with that instead.

It was a pretty huge museum, and given our late arrival, we were pretty much guaranteed not to see everything.  There were many exhibits to choose from, including Africa, Asia, Ancient Egypt, bioscience, and the history of all life on Earth.  A few we were only able to briskly speed-walk through before the museum started to close down.  Some highlights:

Ancient Egypt:

Aforementioned All-Life-On-Earth Exhibit:

With the obligatory dino bones

Misc:

Hey, by the way, this is going to be an image-heavy post.

Shot of the skyline stepping out of the museum:

You're going to be seeing a lot more of it.  Forgive me, but Chicago is an infinitely photographable city

We decided to walk up along the coast of Lake Michigan back to our hotel, seeing what we could along the way.  Here's a pic out across the surface of the lake:

I could not figure out how people are supposed to get to their boats

We got to this gigantic fountain, which is something my parents had marked off as must-see:

The geyser sprayed up considerably, and the mist cascaded down on anyone on the wrong side of the fountain which, in 40 degree weather, was tremendously unpleasant.

Thought that was a cool entrance to the subway.  Mostly - and I say this as someone who did not grow up in a town with subways but has traveled on them in DC, New York, London, etc - I feel like the entrances are never this ornate, but all over Chicago they were nicely dressed-up.

We got to Millennium Park, another red-circled destination on our map.  They should rename it "Weird as Shit Art Park" because that's what there is all over it.  Like this one, which I've included a sequence of photos for so that you can understand what these monoliths did over a period of about 10 minutes:

Yeah.

We also got to see Cloud Gate, AKA The Bean, AKA The Big Mirror Ball Thingy, which I forgot was in Chicago and would have been really disappointed to have missed:

Inside

Me doing my best Matt Harding impersonation:

If you don't know what I'm talking about, FOR SHAME 
 That was about it for the evening.  We retired to the hotel, had dinner at Billy Goat Tavern, which was apparently made famous by some nigh-nonsensical SNL sketch in the 70s, and went to bed.

The next day was considerably warmer, less cloudy, and on the whole just nicer.  Our plan was to tackle the Wait-It's-Not-Named-Sears-Tower-Anymore? buidling, AKA Willis Tower, first thing to beat the lines, then amble on over to the Art Institute for the afternoon.  Though the tower ostensibly opened at 10, we got there at about 9:30 because of accidental earliness and, for some reason, they were already letting people in, so we jumped right on up.

Gotta tell you, the view is something else.  And with our early start, we had almost the run of the full observation deck, well before the crowds mucked it all up.  Pictures:

And of course, we had to do the glass-bottom walk-out observation decks:

I saw these things and thought, you know, okay, I'll just go out there, no big deal.  Not gonna be a big baby about it.  But I'll tell you, you take one look down 103 stories and you kind of get dizzy.  I had to grab onto the building to feel alright.  It was kinda freaky!

Me, freaked.

We exited the building maybe quarter after 10 to find the line out the door.  Yes!  Always a good feeling to beat the crowds.

Those same observation boxes from the bottom, for context:

As it neared lunch time, we decided to indulge in the one food anyone visiting Chicago is required to try: Deep Dish Pizza

Taking a picture of my food.  I guess I'm a white girl.  At least I didn't Instagram it.

We then walked across town to the Art Institute of Chicago, which I was very excited to see for one reason in particular:

That's right: Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

This was also the painting that I would have been most interested in seeing at the Indianapolis Art Museum's pointillism exhibit.  They didn't have it thought.  Cause it was here.

They had a big ol' gallery FULL of impressionistic paintings: your Monets, your van Goghs, etc:

Look at those thick globs of paint!  So unrefined!  So imprecise!  But what ART!

Other galleries included Modern:

No, that was not a bench - that was one of the arts

Surrealism:

Check out the title of that Dali painting.  Wacky!

Ancient:

Weapons and Armor:

These dudes:

And of course, pre-1900 European Paintings, or as my dad called it, Real Art.  This meant lots of big:

lots of extravagant:

and yes, lots of Jesus:

I thought the building itself was pretty nice, too:

And last but not least, the other Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

I did not get to make out with Sloane Peterson.  Sloane Peterson was not present.

On our walk back toward uptown, we passed by a Macy's that was 9 stories tall and took up an entire city block.  We went in.

This place was more ornate than parts of the Art Institute.  It was kind of ridiculous.  The place had three coffee shops just in itself, two of which were Starbucks.

Oh, a word on Starbucks.  There is, no joke, a Starbucks on every block in downtown Chicago.  You pass a Starbucks, cross a street, pass another Starbucks.  Cross another street, pass another Starbucks.  All of them packed with customers.  As a joke, anytime we'd pass one I would say, "hey look!  A Starbucks!" and there were enough of them that even I got annoyed with myself.  That is a lot of Starbucks!!!!

Some shots of our walk around town:

 We passed by this building:

Which was built with stones from places all over the world:

And my mom raised an interesting question, which is...how did they manage to steal stones from all of those places??  Like, really, the Taj Mahal said "oh you're building Some Building in Chicago?  Sure, let me chip off a stone for you.  Happy to help!"  I find that extremely suspect.

We went to look inside this church we'd heard about, the local Episcopal Cathedral I believe:

To our great surprise, we found them in the middle of a service:

And not just any service, but a blessing of the animals service!

Fat dogs!

After that, as we neared our hotel, we saw this place:

Eataly.  Get it?  GET IT???

We thought we might browse through and pick up something for dinner, but the place turned out to be some kind of wild and crazy store the likes of which I'd never seen.  It was like an Italian restaurant, wine bar, and upscale grocery store all in one.  If you lived nearby (and had the money), you'd never need another grocery store, chocolatier, coffee shop, seafood counter, or like...ANYTHING ever again.  It was nuts!

Another night partaking of Embassy Suite's open bar happy hour, another early turn-in, and another early morning, and we were back on the L, back in the airport, and back on our respective planes headed home.  And yes, I got sick.  I told you I would.  Thankfully, at the recommendation of a friend, I all but overdosed on vitamin C, Nyquil, and special herbal tea, and within a few days was back to my old self.

Chicago's one of those places you've just got to see.  There's so much.  There's plenty I didn't quite get to and would absolutely spend another trip to see.  I'd probably go about two or three weeks earlier if I had the choice, in mid-September.  That way, you (probably) don't get the cold and rain.  And I'd probably have done one more day if I could have.  But either way, finally, I saw Chicago.  And was it ever grand!