USA – the MIDDLE

Last morning in this fine apartment.

Alexander Calder’s Red Flamingo, 1973-4. You know I love it. I had many peeks at this guy over the week but this was my only chance to get it without cars and buses and crowds. It’s different from every angle.

Like a city should have, we L-ed it right into the airport and had an uneventful journey home. See Ya Chicago!

I missed all the Frank Lloyd Wright, of which there is so much to see and admire. I didn’t get my Chicago hot dog. I didn’t see any music. I didn’t get to walk on the Lakefront Trail. We might have walked some on The Magnificent Mile at some point, I’m not sure. We didn’t get into the Aquarium, the Planetarium, or the Zoo. I didn’t get to the Buckingham Fountain even though we could see it out the window. I missed the main train station… I’m going to stop listing now, clearly I could go again and enjoy myself entirely!

I mentioned before how the L runs all through the downtown, noisy but convenient and for me even scenic. I asked AI if Chicagoans liked the L: “Yes, Chicagoans like the “L” for many reasons, including: Reliable: The “L” is a reliable way to get around and avoid traffic. Connects the city: The “L” has helped Chicago’s dense city core grow and is well-integrated into the city. Voted one of Chicago’s wonders: In a 2005 poll, Chicago Tribune readers voted the “L” one of the city’s “seven wonders”. 

Walking to our last chance for a Chicago Open House to see the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

All you can see is the lobby above, and the Money Museum which is very cool and open to the public during the week.

Yes, they are giving away bags of money. Every day the Chicago Fed and the Detroit Branch shred about $26 million in worn out currency and loads up about $350 worth into these bags to give away.

1888 The Rookery.

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Our destination was the viewing platform at the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the world for 25 years. And like the tour guides like to say, Chicago might not have the tallest building in the world any more, but the tallest buildings are still designed by Chicago architects.

We say Sears Tower instead of the ‘new’ name because one of our guides said all Chicagoans says Sears Tower. I asked him, was that because we don’t like Willis or because we don’t like change. His emphatic response: because we don’t like change.

A model in the tower’s museum and in real life.

You can get in line for your 90 seconds on The Ledge.

RiGHT?! Worth the price of admission!

Our last meal with Ingalill before she heads home. Bye Lill, it’s been Great! They had 100 beers at this place and we each picked such a different one.

We all went back to the apartment, Lill to head home and Marsha and I to catch our breath and put up our feet, used and abused as they were.

Then it was off to the last activities we had time for including the Chicago History Museum.

It was very cool! We had only a little over an hour before they closed and we both were sorry to miss so much of it.

We spent most of our time in the display about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and it was so interesting and especially well done.

We got to have one of the best meals of the trip at this place, Twin Anchors, and it was all ribs all day and all night long.

And THEN lastly we made an iconic stop at Second City. It was a delight.

It was a sketch show, no photos of course, with plenty of LOLs from us and the crowd.

The Chicago Open House was organized by the Chicago Architecture Center, where we are getting all our tours. They’ve been doing it for 10 years and it is wonderful. More than 170 sites are participating this year, opening their private clubs, behind-the-scenes business enterprises, lobbies, and dining rooms of architectural interest, and more, it’s just wonderful and when I visit Chicago again I will book during Open House weekend.

We were standing in this line and then Lill got a text with Membership Passes from one of our tour guides(!) so we went straight to the head of the line! Thanks!!

The University Club of Chicago. There are 12 of these huge stained glass windows in their magnificent ballroom.

They’re setting up for a wedding.

A view of the section of the Riverwalk from where the Chicago Architecture Center runs it’s river cruise.

Marsha and I took the Elevated Architecture: Downtown ‘L’ Train offered by the CAC, again a knowledgeable, personable, likable fellow told us stories.

See the four facades starting with the red brick. They were built within a few years of each other, each in its own style. Now-a-days they save the facades and build modern towers just inside them. You can see the glass tower in the upper middle. It makes for a more interesting and historic streetscape.

Fun how the station here complements the library.

Finished with the tour we met up with Lill for some snacks and an especially tasty Black and Tan.

Then we went to our next Open House, the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, built in 1968, located at 55 East Wacker Drive. Say Wacker like you were about to wack someone. Wacker. I said it oh, about, 1000 times. Wacker. My friends wanted to take a detour so we would not find ourselves on Wacker Drive and have to hear me say…Wacker.

We were sitting peacefully in the audience of the church quietly admiring the pipe organ when, breaking the calm, booming cords filled the room, and it was this little lady making it happen.

Next Open House stop was an architecture firm where no photos allowed, below is looking out their window. It was so interesting, they had staff doing small tours and all the scale models of their projects past and future were on display.

Gathering in the lobby was this group of architects preparing for the Arts in the Dark parade. Wow, we hit the big time with CAC Chicago Open Houses and Arts in the Dark. We punked out on the actual parade…

…but here are some pictures from the internet. I see this is the 10th parade as is Chicago Open House, the 10th year. Probably not a coincidence.

Sunrise over Lake Michigan. It is different for us every morning being from a place where the sun sets over the water. When I’m up and the sky is clear, I never fail to admire the event. And then for several days during the “Super Hunter’s Moon” the moon rose over the lake too. (I’ve got a picture of the moon rise on the 16th.)

It was remarkable how often people offered to take our picture, every age, every ethnicity, every everything, and Lill was totally in the swing too as was Marsha. In this regard, we were Chicagoans!

On the way to our morning Essential Chicago walking tour I made everyone detour to see the Chagall mural which turned out to be in the middle of a construction site and we couldn’t get any closer than this having made the shot pushing the phone inside the green canvas cover over the chain link fence.

Kicking off Essential Chicago. We used the Chicago Architecture Center for our tours and they were all wonderful as was the Center itself.

Oh my goodness, the way these trains zigzag through the city is amazing, that it works at all and that people put up with the noise, more amazing, which is a chance to say that public transportation in Chicago, the L trains, the subway, the buses, even the inexpensive and always available lyft make getting around so easy. Oh, and walking. We did WALK. Toward the end of the day Marsha and I would beg for mercy and hop the bus. Ingalill, on the other hand, would walk home.

This is the Frank Gehry designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a bandshell in Millennium Park. All we Angelenos recognized who did this from across the park.

I was surprised with how few pieces of street art I came across.

Above and below, the Marshall Field and Company department store that Macy’s took over in 2006. With the decline in popularity of department stores, around 2020 the owners converted the top six floors to office space.

After the Essential Chicago tour we went home for a break, ate a snack, and RESTED, and then we were off for the Architectural River Cruise.

The cruise runs you through the heart of downtown and under all those bridges across the arm of the Chicago River that reaches Lake Michigan.

Here come TONS (haha) of the riverfront bridges and buildings. When you come to Chicago you’ll learn all about them too. We started the tour at 5:30 so we could get some day, some dusk, and some dark. It worked out so well.

Notice the three most prominent buildings and how the slight difference in angle and position changes the whole perspective.

All the pink is about Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Turning around.

Our Lill.

And lastly we picked this place, Bongiorno’s, because it was nearby and open and got good reviews. Turns out it was wonderful, so down home and yummy, we hung around until closing time. That’s the chef’s wife who managed the floor and made everyone feel welcome and well-served.

The Lions of Michigan Avenue are a pair of 1893 bronze sculptures by Edward Kemeys installed as guardians of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago, what a blockbuster.

It was our morning to visit the Art Institute. We got there before it opened and before the line got long.

The signature piece on display was Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave, recently brought out of storage where they keep it for years out of the light.

At first we didn’t even see the thing! Yes, it was on a side-wall, so small. Wow.

Here are a few pictures as a reminder to myself of what a fabulous place this is and how little of what was there that we actually saw.

We took a stroll around Navy Pier, a tourist attraction with an amusement park, restaurants, home to exhibition space, festivals, etc.

I got to do a small section of the Riverwalk which only made me want to do it all. It’s quite wonderful.

Notice the ads plastering the side of the trains. It can make it hard to look out the windows…

Marsha really wanted to have a fancy Chicago steak house dinner and chose Smith and Wollensky Steak House which turned out to be exactly that, a fancy Chicago steak house where the food was delicious and the river view was equally fabulous. Not so fancy though that we were not completely comfortable in our touring clothes so win-win.

Catching more shots of the river on the way home.

And oh my goodness, here we are again in Millennium Park and…

…The BEAN!

More from The Bean/Cloud Gate later.

Marsha and I decided to have a stroll around the southern part of Grant Park since it is right out our front door.

We went first to the Field Museum of Natural History to see SUE in the Flesh, their new T-Rex exhibit, and here she is:

The very fine and very huge building.

Walking out to the Adler Planetarium where a path leads around the building for more views.

This is the planetarium itself and our view from the apartment.

There was an exhibit along the way of an art project called Agora (Big Feet) designed by Magdalena Abakanowicz. There are 106 of these headless, armless, hollow figures with very big feet. I think it’s creepy and Marsha thinks it’s cool, which the reviewers say, love it or hate it. (I got the photo on the right from the internet.)

Our building from the park.

As for Fall Colors, we’re seeing a lot of yellow but not one red leaf.

PIZZA for lunch! Ingalill arrived and we went straight for some Chicago Pizza.

We all are hot for the street lamps and for the bus service. Tired of walking? Hop the bus!

What’s the first thing to do after Lill’s arrival and lunch? Millennium Park and The Bean. Yes I do, I do have 25 more pictures but I will spare us.

It’s So Fun here for one reason because every single person is smiling the entire time they are within the orbit of The Bean.

See what I did here? Nice!

From the inside.

Next stop, the main library but first a couple of city views.. Michigan Avenue.

The L.

The de rigueur photo of Lill and Penny in reflection.

The Harold Washington Library Center built in 1990(!).

A display hanging above the escalators.

Librarians are wonderful people.

You can rent this space for receptions.

And then home for left-over pizza, moonrise, and Rest.

Since I was awake from 3a, I got up at 5a to watch dawn break over Lake Michigan and follow along with the rising sun. What a view.

The inset below shows rail lines being part of what made Chicago such an important city.

The day was predicted to be our only rainy day of the week, rainy and winds of 20 mph so we decided not to do the “Elevated Architecture: Downtown ‘L’ Train” tour until another day. Instead we met Meriellen for lunch!

..at The Berghoff, a Chicago institution since 1898. All the food was so delicious, what a treat, good food and Meriellen.

Then we took a lyft to the Museum of Contemporary Art. There was a lot of oddball stuff on every level of this “Descending the Staircase” exhibit.

And this show, a retrospective of Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence which I liked very much.

This was fun.

It was pouring particularly hard when we left the museum and the wind had really kicked in so we trotted the 3 blocks to the largest Starbucks in the world, the 4 story Starbucks Reserve Roastery, to enjoy the novelty. Notice the curving escalator ascending to the 4th floor where they serve all manner of adult beverages. The aerial view is from their website.

The weather let up and we hopped a bus back to the apartment for a little rest, more wonderful views, and then a light dinner at a Japanese place, Niu B Sushi and Noodles, just on the corner from the apartment.

The rest of the week is set for cool temperatures and sunny skies and we’re excited to hit the streets.

We, Marsha and I, flew in on United and took the super-easy and direct train from the airport into downtown. It was dark by the time we got settled so we buzzed down to the nearby market for some food and decided to make an early night. It’s 11pm here now though, so not so early.

I should have turned off the lights! I’ll work on doing better on another night. Here are a couple views out the living room windows. We’ve got views of Lake Michigan too, out there in the darkness.