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The hotel had been much quieter overnight, but once it was daylight the noise commenced. After being up so late, we had another lazy morning. We made coffee (they supplied Starbucks and we made it 1/3 the regular strength) and took showers and reflected on how lovely the previous evening had been.
We left the room at 12:30. It was another sunny day, and I had (perhaps too ambitiously) worn shorts and a tank top. we walked to Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan. It was a bit chilly, but people were out on the beach, playing beach volleyball, etc. That area is so nice, with the lake, the beach, and bike trails. The lake is so immense that it truly looked like an ocean. Being from the Northeast we tend to take the ocean for granted. We sometimes wonder what it is like to live in the interior of the country, far from the ocean. We realized today that for all intents and purposes, this may as well be an ocean for the people who live here. Then we walked down the Magnificent Mile and went into a very cool LEGO store. We spent quite a while looking at all the LEGO sculptures. The employees were really friendly - it was like we were at Disney World. We saw a LEGO Taj Mahal that we absolutely fell in love with (at 5922 pieces, it’s the largest LEGO set ever). Though we didn’t buy it today (the box would be too big to fit in our carry-on) we wound up buying it online as an 11th wedding anniversary gift to one another. Other than the Jazz Record Mart, it was our only shopping of the trip, as we learned that our favorite Chicago store (the Rand McNally Store) was no longer there. Also absent from Michigan Ave was Garrett's Popcorn, where people used to wait in insanely long lines to buy their fresh delicious buttery caramel corn. We had toyed with the idea of taking an architecture cruise, but the timing didn't work out right, so we decided to skip it. We walked to Millennium Park to view the public art displays. We were mesmerized by the Cloud Gate. It's really difficult to explain, so I will quote directly from the Millennium Park web site: "Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives. Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high." It is just amazing. Its elliptical shape reflects the buildings around the park such that buildings which are on perpendicular streets appear to be side-by-side. It reflects an imaginary skyline. Because of its contours, objects are reflected many times, and as you watch people move, a single reflection will split, as if by mitosis, into two. We entered the "gate" and once we were underneath the structure, it got even more amazing. Craig suggested that I try a photo with a flash to see if the light reflected strangely. The resulting image was very cool, with the single flash reflected 35 separate times. It was like a game of Where's Waldo to try to find your own image amidst the reflections. People of all ages were admiring the statue. Craig overheard a man say "If only the artist knew how much joy he was bringing to all of these people." Indeed. While we were inside the chamber beneath the sculpture, a street performer dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker was running around. It was incredibly surreal to see him reflected everywhere you looked. I must admit that my childhood fear of clowns kicked in and I was a little wary of getting too close too him. Behind the Cloud Gate was the massive Jay Pritzker Pavilion. To quote from the Milennium Park web site again (they describe this architecture far better than I ever could): "The Pavilion stands 120-feet high, with a billowing headdress of brushed stainless steel ribbons that frame the stage opening and connect to an overhead trellis of crisscrossing steel pipes. The trellis supports the...state-of-the-art sound system...[which] was designed to mimic the acoustics of an indoor concert hall."The Pavilion was designed by architect Frank Gehry, and construction was completed in 2004. There are 4000 seats and the lawn holds an additional 7000 people. It was a shame that there wasn't a concert here today. It was the perfect kind of day to lay out on the lawn and watch some live music. By now it was mid-afternoon and we were getting hungry. There was still more of the park that we wanted to explore, so we decided to eat on-site at the Plaza at Park Grill. After waiting around 15-20 minutes, we were shown to a nice al fresco table with an umbrella. We were near the bar, and could see the Blackhawks and Redwings playoff game on TV. Craig got a 10 oz kobe burger with gorgonzola cheese, grain mustard, and balsamic onions on a pretzel bun served with kettle chips, and I had a marinated Cajun chicken sandwich with honey mustard, cheddar, grilled onions, lettuce, tomato and served with kettle chips. The sandwiches really were as fancy as they sound. We had a laid-back, delicious lunch while people-watching. Craig had a Goose Island Summer and I had a piña colada. After lunch, we wandered to the outdoor South Boeing Gallery, where we saw three statues which were a part of an exhibit called A Conversation with Chicago: Contemporary Sculpture From China. "Windy City 2009" by Sui Jianguo was a large CAD/CAM model of a red dinosaur with a Made in China label on its belly. "Jia Shan Shi No. 46" by Zhan Wang looked like a stalagmite made of liquid mercury. The most disturbing was one called "Valiant Struggle 11" by Chen Wenling. It was a red car with a protruding tongue from which were suspended a golden pig, and a man and a woman dressed like cupids. The anatomically correct caricatures were a little bit over the top. I'm not usually a prude, but who really needs to see a detailed representation of a hog's anus? Next we went to see the Crown Fountain, another very interesting art installation in the park. It consists of two 50-foot tall towers of glass block on opposite ends of a plaza. Water runs down each of the four sides of each tower creating a man-made waterfall, and the amount of water and rate of flow vary. Faces of Chicago citizens are projected larger than life on LED screens on the front of each tower. At first you may think that they are photographs, but as you watch, the faces blink and change expression. Then all of a sudden, the faces purse their lips and a stream of water shoots out of their mouths. It is very unique and unexpected. The runoff from the fountains is collected on the ground in a reflecting pool which is only about half an inch deep, and is then recycled through the fountain. Despite the chilly wind, children were walking through the reflecting pool and standing under the shower of water emanating from the fountains. The Crown Fountain was designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. We walked across the newly opened Nichols footbridge to the Art Institute. The museum was just closing, so we then headed back to the Cloud Gate. The wind was very chilly, and I wished I had brought a jacket or worn long pants. We admired the Cloud Gate from all angles. We had hoped that we would get to see it at sunset, but we couldn’t hold out that long in the chilly wind. We then headed back to the hotel. There was an afternoon reception going on in the lobby and we had some complimentary juice and snacks before heading up to the room to put on some warmer clothes. We were tempted to go to Kingston Mines to see Charlie Love perform again, but neither of us had the energy for another night at a club. Also, we needed to get to the airport early in the morning, and had a sneaking suspicion that if we went to Kingston Mines, we wouldn’t get back to the hotel until much too late. So instead we walked around in search of a place to enjoy dinner. Craig suggested Carson’s (“The Place for Ribs”), where we had eaten on our first trip to Chicago. It was an excellent choice. After a 5 or 10 minute wait we were seated at a nice semicircular booth. We each got a half rack of baby back ribs and we split a pork chop. The waitstaff tied Carson's plastic bibs around our necks. It was all part of the experience. The meat was absolutely delicious and their bbq sauce had a delightful zing. They gave us each a mountain of juicy cole slaw. Craig had a twice baked potato and I had sweet potato fries sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Yum! Craig got a Dundee Honey Brown beer (which had a cute cartoon of a bumble bee beating a bass drum in a marching band on the label) and I had an appletini. They were playing cheesy decades-old pop music...“Loving you (Is Easy ‘Cause You’re Beautiful)” and something solo by Don Henley. Some blues would definitely have been more appropriate in this atmosphere. After stuffing ourselves to capacity with delicious food, we left the restaurant. It turned out that we were the last customers to leave, and they turned off their sign just as I was getting a photo of it. It wasn't all that late (around 10 pm), so we were lucky we decided to go in there when we had or we would have missed out. Not being ready to call it quits for the night (or for the trip, for that matter) we headed to the Clark Street Ale House for a nightcap. We got a round of tequila shots and Craig had a Sand Creek Wild Ride IPA from Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and I had a vodka and cranberry. The people watching was fun as patrons and employees dared one another to down a spoonful of hot sauce. We walked back and took some night photos of the Water Tower all lit up. We checked out the grounds of the Fourth Presbyterian Church a block from our hotel. It was lit up really nicely, and we walked into the nicely manicured courtyard which featured several statues. Homeless people were asleep wrapped in clean white sheets, laying on the cement walkways under the stone archways. It was nice to see that the church provided them with bedding and a relatively sheltered place to sleep. We were back to the room by 12:30, and I wrote in the journal until 1 o’clock. |
 Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower  Cloud Gate  Craig at the Cloud Gate  Cloud Gate, interior  Jay Pritzker Pavilion  Plaza at Park Grill  Crown Fountain  Dinner at Carson's 
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