Monday, October 19, 2009

ILLINOIS - CHICAGO











We got to our hotel in Chicago last night with me assuring Nic that there would be an elevator if we weren’t on the ground floor. This was after all, a large city. It wouldn’t be like the motels we had stayed in so far.
After lugging our stuff up another set of stairs ………. Well you get the picture.
There has been a dramatic change in the weather as we have been moving towards the west (we have also picked up an hour now that we are on central time which is very nice) and today the thermals and my new scarf and coat were put to good use.
The place we were staying at was in the city so we could walk everywhere which was fantastic as it can be a real pain trying to get parking.
Oh yeah. And it was good exercise too.
We started out on the river walk which was basically to get to the start of the Art and Architecture walking tour that is suggested in the Lonely Planet guide - well actually the end because we did it backwards. (The water was such a pretty green/emerald colour, like a swimming pool, that it almost looked fake). We saw a lot of amazing buildings - Chicago is well known for its architecture and for a long time, had America’s tallest building. Everyone knows it as the Sears Tower but it has recently been renamed to the Willis Tower as someone new bought it.
While we were walking we noticed a glass case with the wings worn by Miranda Kerr for Victoria’s Secrets and you can stand in front of it and it kind of looks like you are wearing them. Naturally we did that and then found they have a bunch of them all around a particular part of the city.
We had a look at two of them and then we were over it.
Along the architectural walk we stopped by a yummy chocolate shop, the Chicago Cultural Center and also saw a pigeon get hit by a car. A girl carried it over to the grass and Nic spoke to some road workers who were going to call someone to come and get it and look after it. Something like the Chicago version of the RSPCA I think.
On the walk was a place called Millennium Park which was full of sculptures, one of which is amazing and officially called “Cloud Gate” but everyone knows as the Bean. Because it looks like a huge super smooth and shiny bean that you can see your reflection in as well as the city around you. If you stand under it and look up, the patterns the reflections make are incredible.
Before the end of the walk we wandered down to the harbour to look at the boats. Man was it cold down there and there were a ton of geese/duck things. I guess I should know exactly what they were but they didn’t quite look like geese and they didn’t quite look like ducks. What I do know, is that you had to look where you were walking to avoid their poo. So I saw more of the ground than the view.
The last place we wanted to go before grabbing some dinner was to visit Oprah. We would have loved to see a show but you need to book in advance and we didn’t know what day we were actually going to get there. But we walked to Harpo Studios anyway just so we could take our photo out the front.
We weren‘t the only ones.
After that we grabbed a quick dinner before heading over the road to sit in our $20 seats up the back to watch “Cats”. We have both already seen it but it was years ago and we thought for $20 why not see it again? It was actually a toss up between "Cats" and a show called "Michael and Michael Have Issues". Do you think we made the right choice?
Good name for a show though, huh?

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