Day 28: Chicago

Miles driven to-date: 8,025
States visited to-date: 25

My friend from college, Joel, has lived in Chicago for the past few years so I was excited to get together with him and his girlfriend Beatriz during our stop in this great city. This morning, Joel kindly picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the Wrigleyville section of town where the four of us had breakfast. It was really good to catch up and also to hear first-hand from Joel and Beatriz what it’s like to live in Chicago.

After a very tasty breakfast, we all walked to Wrigley Field where a charity event was taking place. I know Steve was excited to see this famous ballpark.

Like Fenway, Wrigley is built right into a neighborhood and Joel pointed out that several of the homes next to the field have bleachers on their rooftop balconies. For the right price, you can rent out the roof to have your own private party with great views of the game.

After Joel and Beatriz dropped us back downtown, Steve and I perused the many stores on Michigan Avenue and Steve did a little back-to-school shopping. By the way, buying jeans and sweatshirts to wear to class is much more fun than buying work suits to begin a job! When walking around, we noticed the countless beautiful flower beds nestled in the middle of the city sidewalks. Chicago is certainly a very pretty city – much prettier than I had even expected.

We then headed to the Rock Bottom Brewery to watch the final World Cup soccer game. The bar had a great atmosphere with lots of excited fans. We noticed a sign saying that in Chicago, smoking is only permitted within 15 feet of the bar so at commercial breaks all of the smokers crowded around us to get their nicotine fixes. When the game went into overtime, we just enjoyed some more beer.

After the game, we walked down past the Chicago River and saw the Art Institute (which we didn’t have time to explore but definitely want to do next time). We also saw all of the booths set up for the Taste of Chicago, a big festival that features food from all of the city’s restaurants and allows you to taste different types of cuisine. This sounded heavenly to me but unfortunately we had to keep walking because we had signed up for a Chicago Architecture Foundation boat tour. Joel had suggested this as an alternative to a bus tour and in retrospect, it was a great idea.

We sat on the top deck of the boat so we had lots of good views of the city’s unique buildings as we traveled up and down the Chicago River. Our tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable and mentioned lots of interesting facts about the history of Chicago and how the architecture reflects the spirit of this vibrant city. Much of the city needed to be rebuilt after a devastating fire in the late 1800s but this allowed for better urban planning and even nicer architecture in the end. I found it interesting that for awhile, Chicago had the biggest post office in the country because of all the catalogues that were published here and needed to be distributed: Montgomery Ward, Sears, Marshall Fields, etc. The Sears Tower was pretty impressive, even though we learned that the United Arab Emirates will soon be home to a building 1/3 taller.

The Sears Tower

One of the views during our boat cruise.

The boat trip was definitely a highlight of our stop in Chicago! Afterwards, we took another one of Joel’s suggestions and went to the 96^th floor of the Hancock Building to see the city during a beautiful sunset. We then hit the subway to get to Buddy Guy’s Legends, a famous blues club. We enjoyed jambalaya and Cajun meatloaf while listening to a great blues band.

Buddy Guy’s

We can’t wait to come back to Chicago when we have more time to explore. I would like to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright and see his home and studio, while Steve wants to catch a game at Wrigley, eat more sausage, and consume more beer. At least we have a few more hours here in the morning . . . we hope to post more soon!