Chicago: Day One

Sunday night we arrived at Garrett's cousin house in a northwest Chicago suburb after a long drive (mostly through the unexciting land of Indiana).

This is the #1 reason why we went to Chicago this year, as Margaret and Rob (the cousins) have this big house for just the two of them (occasionally Rob's daughters stay here, but not much anymore) and offered us to stay with them anytime we wanted to come up and visit. And since they're talking about moving in the next few years, we thought now now would be a good time. We spent the evening relaxing and enjoyed Rob's grilling skills.

Just as an aside before I get into the touristy stuff... It was really, really nice to have free lodging, as well as some expert advice about the city. The downside, however, was that it took at least an hour to get to Chicago. It may not sound too bad, like going from Murfreesboro to Nashville, but then imagine rush hour traffic, and then imagine it being much, much worse. So the hour could quickly turn into two if you went at the wrong time (the time everyone else went). But Margaret also knows a good bit about the train system, so we rode the train into the city for two days of our trip. If you catch an express train, it can be about 40 minutes, but a train with more stops can be an hour or so. This was on top of the 15-20 minutes it took to drive to the train station). On top of parking at the train station (which was pretty cheap) and the train tickets, we also paid for parking in the city on two days, and that added up as well. Overall, it was still much cheaper than staying in a decent hotel in downtown Chicago, however, the extra cost for the hotel would be worth it for the convenience of being able to get everywhere easily, USUALLY. But since part of the point of this trip was to visit with Garrett's family, we did what worked best for us this time. I say all this to explain upfront when I talk about running out of time to do things, even though we technically we had several hours left in the day. Moving on...

Monday morning was the morning we woke up the earliest because we were excited and not yet exhausted! It was also a day I had planned to be pack-full of lots of touristy things. We made it to the train station and got tickets, found out we were parked in the wrong lot, moved the car, payed for the parking and arrived on the platform right in the nick of time for the train to arrive! We rode the train, got off at the last stop in Chicago, and found ourselves in the middle of downtown. We pulled out a map and headed for our first destination: Millennium Park.

During our trek there I realized I had left my sunglasses at the house and could not survive the day without a pair. Luckily, we ran across a Filene's Basement on the way, which I had heard was basically a more awesome TJ Maxx. I got a pair of sunglasses for $10 and we were back on our way. Sadly I never checked out more of the store or went back like I had intended, but I am forever indebted to Filene's for saving my eyes by providing cheap sunglasses that weren't the size of my head.

Finally, we made it to Millennium Park!

Millennium Park is particularly well-known for two of their icons. The Crown Fountain:
Which does in fact look just as freaky in real life as it does in the pictures.
And "The Bean" (it's real name is Cloud Gate):
Of course, the thing to do with the bean is take a self-portrait:

We were surprised how many people were at the bean, especially children! Undoubtedly it's a popular site, but we thought we had come right before tourist season. It did appear, however, that most of the kids were there on a field trip.

We continued to walk around the park and saw its neat looking pavilion, its garden (kind of underwhelming), and a neat curvy bridge. We walked the bridge through the park and then past the park, ready for lunch before doing much else.

Something we had intended to do a lot of on the trip was eat at a local places. We were largely unsuccessful for reasons that will become clear in future posts, but we did successfully get our Chicago style pizza for lunch on the first day at a local chain:
They offered individual sized Chicago style pizzas for lunch so we both had one:

And it was soooo good. Now I'm going to have to live with cravings for it until we go back one day...

After lunch, we were ready to head back towards the park to see The Cultural Center of Chicago and The Art Institute. The Cultural Center is something I never would have thought to check out on my own, but I was looking on Yelp for places in Chicago that were well-reviewed and it was at the top of the list. All I knew about it was that it was free and that it was a beautiful building, and right next to other things we were seeing, so why not check it out? We were surprised when we got there and noticed that: (1) One side of the building said it was the library (we found out later that it used to be) and (2) It was a building where a lot was going on. We walked in and I had no idea where to go to see the pretty stuff I was promised, because it wasn't at the entrance. We had to walk through several rooms of people who were milling about, information desks, a cafe and various displays before we found a flight of stairs. We went up a ways and then I saw what I came for: a beautiful Tiffany stained glass dome.

And then I decided that I wanted to live in this building.:)


You got the idea yet? You got it eight pictures ago? Okay, we'll move on...

Next we hit up The Art Institute. When we got there, the guy selling us tickets did a sales pitch for The Chicago City Pass, which I had heard of while I was researching for the trip, but did not believe it was going to be worth our while. But when he showed us that we only had to go to three places for it to be worth our while, which we were planning to do, we decided to go ahead and go for it. It actually proved to be really invaluable on the trip, which I'll explain in a future post.

We wandered around and enjoyed seeing some famous pieces, like so:
I really came to see famous and cool paintings, but we saw a little bit of everything, from Buddha statues to Victorian era knick-knacks to Frank Floyd Wright designed furniture to armor to modern art and more than I can remember. We had no idea how big the museum was going to be and at some point (the point at which my legs felt they were going to fall off) we gave up trying to see it all, happy to have seen the highlights. (We saw a few more famous pieces as you can see in my Facebook album of the trip). And since I know Amy liked it, I'll post a pic of the grand staircase in the museum:

There were multiple flights of stairs all centered in this area that had these words. But needless to say, we did not take the time to read them!

Even though our legs were about to fall off (no seriously, they were, or so it seemed), we were determined to see two more things, and both involved slightly more walking than we realized (oops). First was Grant Park, home to the Buckingham Fountain:

I really cannot explain how big this fountain actually was. It was huge. And you especially can't tell from our (futile) self-portrait attempts in front of the fountain where our heads cover the entire thing (as seen in my Facebook album - look for the two pics of my hair going crazy in the wind), but it was. Trust me. And the mist was refreshing for a warm day.

And then last but not least we made our way to the Willis (Sears) Tower. At first I was not even sure if I wanted to do this super touristy attraction, partly because we were told John Hancock had a better view and partly because I did Empire State once and was underwhelmed, but it did not disappoint.

First off, with the City Pass our admittance there was already covered. Second, if it had been busy (which it wasn't at all, as we were whisked right through everything before we went up the elevator), with the City Pass we would have been able to jump to the front of the line. Pretty awesome! So once we went through everything and went up the (very fast) elevator, we were surrounded by a complete 360 degree view all around. We could walk around as we pleased and see the view from the side of the building, and then this side, and then... you get the idea. And it was the most perfect, clear day for it.

I've got more pictures on Facebook for your viewing pleasure if you feel so inclined to check them out. Now what I really, really loved about this experience was the Skydeck you could walk out onto... we're talking a little glass box sticking out of the side of the building, like so:

I did have to brace myself when I walked onto the glass floor, but I was on, I was good... and totally exhilarated! I don't consider myself a crazy adventurous person, but I really love heights (s0 long as I feel safe and secure). Sort of funny, but true. You can see it on my face here:


But here's a better picture of the experience:

Garrett thought I was crazy, but I highly recommend doing this.

And with that, we knew that we had enough for one day (seriously, our legs were going to fall off any second). We got back on the train and headed back to Rob and Margret's, where we enjoyed another dinner at their home. The first day involved the most activity, the most walking, and the best weather. Things slowed down a good bit after this and our legs hurt the rest of the week from this one day, but it was so worth it. I would not have done anything differently. We took advantage of everything we needed to on the prettiest day we had.

I'll have a couple more posts for the remaining three days, and don't worry, they'll be shorter! :)