Chicago Day 1
It's Spring Break time! This year we are lucky enough to get 2 weeks for spring break, so I decided to plan a vacation. I'm spending two days in Chicago with my cousin Becca (and husband Dustin), and 5 days in Boston with college friends Carla and Sula (and baby Gracie!).
First up was Chicago!
I had a panic moment on the flight when I realized I didn't have my boarding pass (after I was on the plane), so I didn't know where to sit. Turns out it was "general admission seating," and you just sat wherever. I ended up on the very back row aisle, so that wasn't bad. I flew in on Monday night, which left enough time for us to chat and figure out what we were going to do the next day. We had big plans for Tuesday, and crossed our fingers that it wouldn't rain. We got lucky on that part...we woke up to thunderstorms, but we only experienced a little mist at the very beginning of the day.
We took the train into the city, and walked across the street to the Willis Tower.
It seems that the Sears Tower recently changed it's name, but I don't know if anyone is really cares. Our boat tour guide called it "the former Sears Tower," which I found pretty amusing. I called it "The Tower Formerly Known As Sears" in my head. Anyway, I looked around at some of the history stuff and watched a short video, then took the elevator up to the 103rd floor. On the way up, there's a view screen that shows as you pass the height of famous world landmarks. It's a crazy fast elevator, and it did some shaking on the way up. I wandered around and took a ton of photos of the city...
...and went out on the glass viewer things. It's crazy that just a few inches of glass are all that stand between you and the road 103 floors below.
There was a man in a wheelchair that had a service dog, and the dog planted his feet and wouldn't go onto the glass part. I can imagine that would be very confusing, and I don't blame him!
After the Tower, we walked across town to Loopy Yarns. I always get souvenir sock yarn, and there was a shop in the city that was easy to find. As we walked across town, we passed a triangle building in the middle of the city that is a prison.
It was interesting to see the city change as we walked through nicer parts and not so nice parts. We made it to Loopy (after a brief walk down some back alley), and it is a great store! They had a big selection, and even some sale yarn. The best part is that they offered a teacher discount! I bought some Dream in Color Starry (it's purple and sparkly), and my cousin, who doesn't knit, bought some Malabrigo for a scarf! She went right for the good stuff, and I was very pleased with my enabling ability. :) I would definitely recommend Loopy to anyone visiting Chicago. The prices were a little high on some things, but I don't think it was a big problem for a one time trip.
After Loopy we headed to the river to take an architectural boat tour. Since I was only in town a few days, I had to pick some things over others. I chose not to go to any museums or the aquarium, partly because of cost and partly because of the time factor. As interesting as those thing probably are, I'd rather spend my time seeing the city itself than seeing museum stuff. We stopped at Jamba Juice for a snack, and it was delicious. Jamba Juice was right across from Millennium Park, so we went over there for a bit. We took pictures of the bean, and photos of ourselves taking photos of the bean.
We made it to the river right on time, and boarded for the architectural tour. We went with a company called Wendella, because it offered an hour and a half tour that included the river and the lake. The Chicago School of Architecture also offers a tour in the summer, and I think it would be really cool to have an architecture student talking about all the buildings. I'm sure all of the tours were good, but I think it's really important to go out on the lake to see the whole skyline.
We started off right by Trump Tower, which was ginormous.
We rode around the river for a bit, and saw lots of different types of buildings. A few of them really stuck out. The first was an office building that did some type of inset on the corners, so there are 16 corner offices per floor instead of 4. Very clever, and they can probably raise the rent because of it.
There were some circular parking structures,
and a school building with windows on only one side (something with one of the colleges). Our guide told us that people gave the architect a hard time about having so few windows, and he responded by saying, "The students should be studying, not looking out windows!" Considering I covered up the window in my classroom for the exact same reason, I absolutely agree. :)
I also seemed to have a fascination with the Chicago Sun Times building, because I took a lot of photos of it.
We passed by Navy Pier,
and then headed out to the lake. We had to sit in a holding spot for a bit, because the water level of Lake Michigan is two feet higher than the water level in the river.
I really liked this lighthouse, and the city used to have a deal where you could live there for $1 a month as long as you kept it functioning. This went on until alcohol got involved, and people were caught standing on the rocks without clothes. That ended that situation.
The city was beautiful, and huge. The light was starting to come through the clouds, and was really nice. It showed up a little on the photos, which I was happy about.
After the tour we headed back towards the trains to go home (it was around 6:30pm at this point). While we were walking, we picked a street to turn down. I started smelling this amazing smell, and a few stores later we saw Garrett's popcorn. Oh. My. Goodness. It was absolutely delicious! We got some of the caramel corn, and it was buttery and caramely and yummy. The small bag also weighed way more than I expected, and was about 2 quart-sized ziploc bags worth of popcorn (I had enough to share with my Boston friends).
We got back through the train station, and stopped to pick up some Chicago style pizza. I don't think I've had this type of pizza before, and it was really good. It was also really heavy.
At this point we were all about to fall asleep. Dustin went to play video games, and Becca and I stayed up talking until 1am. Becca and I pretty much grew up together until middle school, when she moved to Arkansas. We've only seen each other a handful of times since then (3, actually), so it was nice to talk and catch up and enjoy each other's company.
LJ cut finally worked! Yay! :)