The Windy City

Chicago greeted us with the rather grand looking Union Station and a chilly bite to the air. A quick taxi ride with a war veteran who was bemoaning Dubya’s antics took us to our hotel and hooking up with Joe. Unfortunately his immense enthusiasm & giddiness was unfairly matched against our knackeredness.

Chicago was actually a pretty cool place, the architecture there was amazing and the skyscrapers were astonishing. Maybe it’s because downtown is quite compact, but all the buildings seemed to be huge, towering above everyone below. Allegedly, 3 of the world’s 5 tallest buildings are in Chicago (Sear’s Tower, Aon Centre & J Hancock Centre) after Taipei 1 & the Petronas Towers, but there are loads of stupid rules regarding tall structures. Anyway, from the ground, Sears is unbelievable. We took a journey up Sears Tower in some kind of bullet lift. The view was fantastic, the suburbs seemed to stretch for miles, cloaked on the east by Lake Michigan and we could make out Soldier Field & Wrigley Field. We also had several walks along Michigan Avenue were some of the cool buildings such as the Wrigley Building & Chicago Tribune Towers were. Also along this street was the amazing Mirror Bean in Millennium Park. Although this was just a massive bean shaped thing made of a super shiny metal so you could see the Chicago skyline (and yourself) reflected in it, but it does give some very cool photos.


Another highlight was The Loop. This is just part of the city’s train system that loops around downtown, but it was a great ride and nice to have travelled on the same route that Spidey had to save from Doc Oc in Spiderman 2. We also had some very excellent pizza at Chicago’s best pizza restaurant, only I can’t remember the name of it. It was good though.

Talking of food, we all got to experience our first Thanksgiving festivities. The morning was spent watching the Thanksgiving Day parade – lots of floats, inflatables and marching bands. Due to the train bridges, there was a small alleyway used to deflate the balloons in, when the Big Blue Bear inflated was taken down some little kids started crying cos they thought he was dying. After the parade we headed to a restaurant for some traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which is basically just Christmas dinner, but about 8 weeks early and with candied yams. But it was a damn fine dinner and a good excuse for a roast. Although we didn’t have any, there were some restaurants serving Turducken, which is a turkey stuffed with a duck, which in turn is stuffed with a chicken, and then the usual trimmings. Next day we got to enjoy a German style Christmas village that had been recreated in the city centre and then the tree lighting ceremony.

Last thing to do in Chicago was pick up the car. I was kacking it about driving on the other side of the road and not having any gears to control, but it was necessary for our road trip south...