Labor Day Weekend in Chicago

September 4th:

Hans and I had a very early direct flight from Baltimore to Chicago.  We arrived at our hotel in the Theater District by around 10:30 am and thankfully the staff allowed us to check in early.  After a little rest and map studying Hans and I walked south on Clark Street until I arrived at the Chicago outpost of my job.  Hans took off to wander the lakefront area and I met up with some folks for lunch.  We ate at Saucy Porka, a fusion restaurant, where I had their carnitas and kimchi sandwich.  I nabbed some chorizo egg rolls for takeout. 

After saying goodbye, I met up with Hans near Buckingham Fountain.  We shared the egg rolls and went for a walk around the green space between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan.  It was much warmer outside than we anticipated, so the Art Institute of Chicago became our first official tourist stop.  The impressionism collections were the biggest draw for me but I appreciated standing before Grant Wood's American Gothic, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and other fine examples of American Art.  In the lower level of the museum there was a wonderful gallery of 1:12 scale miniatures that were built in the 1930s and 1940s by master craftsmen to the specifications of an aristocratic artist.

We had a little time to kill before our evening river architecture tour.  Before coming to Chicago I thought that the entire waterfront park area was "Millennium Park" but I soon discovered that the green space that houses the "Bean" sculpture makes up only a small part of what is several individual parks woven together.  As it was still very warm outside; the public fountains with animated images of people spouting water from their lips were overrun with excited children.

The river tour was extremely pleasant.  We sat on the back of the deck so I could occasionally stand while taking pictures without bothering any fellow passengers.  The docent was a wealth of information but it was almost too much to keep track of the different buildings and listen to the narrative.  Still, I can see why the tour is one of the most recommended attractions in the city.  Our cruise ended with a finale out on Lake Michigan, with stunning sunset views looking back into the cityscape.

Nearly dead on our feet after a very long day, we had dinner at Miller's Pub.  Roast leg of lamb for me and their famous ribs for Hans!  Walking back to the hotel after dinner provided a chance to take some pictures of the historic theaters with their glowing lights.

September 5th:

Our attempt to get breakfast at "the best spot in town" promised a long wait.  Instead we went back to Millennium Park where a city employee was chasing people away from the Bean because of lightning threats.  I didn't mind since just a day earlier you could hardly avoid bumping into the multitude of people swarming all over the popular landmark.

We took a bus to the Field Museum, which is kind of like Chicago's version of several DC Smithsonian museums combined into one.  There was a very cool exhibit about soil ecosystems where you are "shrunk" to the size of a very small insect and travel through tunnels and roots.  There were animatronic worms, spiders, and ants to watch out for!  The Ancient Egypt exhibit had some good dioramas of the mummification process.  I was impressed by their section of The Book of the Dead.  I learned that after Osiris' temporary resurrection his penis was fed to a crab.  I guess they left that detail out of my Egyptian mythology school books.  The Mayan exhibit was very interesting, though Hans and I started to get headaches because there was a loud buzzing sound coming from many of the exhibit's electronics.  Many cultural items that were displayed during the Columbian Exposition of 1893 are now housed in the museum.  You'd think you were in the Anchorage Museum for all of the Alaskan and northwest pacific tribal artifacts in their collection.  There were great big rooms full of totems.  A few of the statues in the main hall were displaying their Blackhawks jerseys since Chicago won this year's Stanley Cup.

We spent only an hour inside the very crowded aquarium next door.  After having been to the National Aquarium in Baltimore a couple of times I was a little disappointed by what Chicago had to offer.  I think it was mostly because Shedd is a much older aquarium.  Outside, however, we were being treated to clearing skies and promises of another lovely sunset.

At the Willis Tower our City Pass practically paid for itself.  It took about 40 minutes to get into the building but once our ticket was scanned we bypassed the "3-hours minimum" lines and went straight to the 103rd-floor Skydeck.  Hans wanted nothing to do with the glass boxes that extend about four feet out from the building.  I waited in the stupid line of selfie-takers and felt my heart race as I tolerated maybe two minutes of vertigo before declaring I had "had enough", to the amusement of everybody within earshot.

We tried to get dinner at a famous Giordano's near the tower but the wait for a table was over two hours long.  Instead, we committed to Pizano's over by Michigan Avenue.  The wait was supposed to be about an hour but two people left the bar just as I was scoping it out!  Our feet were dead-tired by this point so we sank into the bar stools with delirium and consumed a monumental amount of toasted ravioli and our first deep dish pizza, which we now know has to be ordered like you're ordering a whole lasagna.  It was intense but oh, so good!  For whatever reason they were playing old-timey music that made me think of classic Christmas movies but it just added to the cozy atmosphere.  The bartenders took good care of us.  We took an after-dinner stroll through the park where a jazz festival was happening.  We hung around for a bit and listened to the band play Cole Porter songs.  We walked down to the water, hoping to view the very last evening summertime fireworks at the Navy Pier but upon realizing how tired we were and that the fireworks weren't for another hour, we gave up and dragged ourselves back to the hotel and fell into an exhausted heap.

Chicago requires a lot of walking.

 View from the 103rd floor, 

looking south, looking north

September 6th:

Two unfortunate things:

1: The older I get, the worse my arthritic foot feels (remains from a past injury)

2: No matter how much I try to ignore this and carry on, I just can't wear cute shoes for a full day of walking and standing.

Woke up barely able to walk.  For the last two days I wore some cute Converse like all the other young city ladies do and I didn't take any precautionary doses of ibuprofen to keep my ankle happy.

The result was that I sat miserably in a restaurant for breakfast while Hans found a drugstore so I could try to make it through the day.  The Museum of Science and Industry is the last remaining structure from the 1893 Exposition (World's Fair) and I was really looking forward to renting bicycles and going on a tour of Frederick Olmsted's landscapes that were created in Jackson Park for the fair.  Bicycle plans scrapped, we still had a great time at the museum.

The first main room has a lot of weather-related interactive exhibits.  Hans and I stood in a mini wind tunnel and experienced hurricane-force wind.  We watched kids go crazy over the tornado simulator and I tried to keep my teeth from rattling out of my head during the Tesla coil demonstration (which was very cool but made a jarring noise I had not expected).

One of the most exciting items at this museum is the German U-505 submarine, the only captured German sub in the US.  It was in very poor condition when it was donated to the museum so it was placed indoors, underground.  Here is a link to the time-lapse installation video.

We could have stayed there all day but...my foot was finally giving up.  We made a few last-ditch souvenir shopping efforts but we ended up buying some popcorn at Garrett's, half of which came home in a commemorative tin and the other half which ended up as our last dinner in Chicago.  I could barely put weight on my foot by the end of the day.

The next morning I switched to some platform height flipflops that were surprisingly soothing to my foot.  I think the small amount of arch support they gave made a world of difference.  We took the train back to the airport and headed home.