Chicago!

Reflections and Chicago architecture
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At 3:00am, I woke up and couldn’t sleep anymore. We stopped in Cleveland, where I was born. The train stop, which is a major one, is right next to the new Cleveland Browns stadium. I haven’t seen it in person before, but couldn’t see much on this trip, since it was very dark.

Sleeping on the train wasn’t the best. We decided not to get a sleeper car, in part because it was pretty expensive and in part because each leg of the trip only had one overnight. Since we planned to spend the night in Chicago (in a hotel), it didn’t seem necessary to have a sleeper car. In hindsight, I’d probably do it the same way, but for a longer trip, I’d definitely think about a sleeper car. (For Carla and anyone else thinking of doing this, I’d suggest bringing a pillow and blanket if you have an overnight on the train.)

Picture taken from the boat
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After reading and writing for a while, I eventually went back to sleep for a couple hours.

We got in to Chicago’s Union Station at about 9:00am. We took a cab to our hotel to drop off our bags before setting out to see the sites. Our hotel in Chicago was the Tremont on Chestnut, just about one block from the Watertower Place. I wasn’t sure how the hotel would be; it was much less expensive than other places nearby. It was really very nice though (nicer even than our hotel in Baltimore). Thank you hotels.com.

Water Works building near our hotel
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We started out by walking on Michigan Avenue on the Miracle Mile. There is a beautiful public art installation all along the street called “Gardens of the Miracle Mile,” sponsored by Nokia. It consists of small (8’ x 20’ or so) areas of flower gardens. Some of them included fountains and even streams. Most included a stylized mannequin decorated by various local businesses (similar to the cows in NYC that were decorated various ways). (I’ll post a video that shows some of these in a couple days. My laptop can’t seem to handle the processing required to render it.:)

Fountains at Grant Park
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We then walked to Grant Park which has two huge fountains made of glass black with large video screens behind them. The weather was warm and sunny, and on a Sunday afternoon, lots of kids were playing in the water.

Brad has begun making movies from time lapse photography and even got a new camera for this before this trip. So we spent some time at the fountains for him to take pictures of that. Afterwards, we went to Millennium Park, a relatively new part of the park that has a lot of nice landscaped areas and a large amphitheater where they have concerts. We laid down on the grass for a while there to rest in the shade.

Public art from the "Gardens of the Miracle Mile" exhibit
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We wanted to take a boat trip on the river and found an architectural tour that we went on. (I’d taken a similar tour with my mom about 15 or so years ago and really enjoyed it.) This was a great tour. It’s fascinating how many of the huge skyscrapers in Chicago were built relatively recently. There is a huge new Trump building that’s going up that will be the tallest building in North America. I took so many pictures of all the buildings that I can’t post them all, but I did make a movie with all of them that you can watch (to be posted later).

Finally, it was time to check in to our hotel. We were eager to do so, especially since we hadn’t taken a shower for a couple days. After a shower, we rested for a while and then watched the first part of the Angels game. Eleven runs were scored in the first two innings, making a win seem almost certain.

We didn’t get to watch the whole game, because we had dinner reservations. I’d made plans to go to Geja’s, a very nice fondue restaurant. (I took Christopher there when he was very small; at that point, he hated anywhere that didn’t serve chicken fingers.) We had a really wonderful time. There was live flamenco guitar music, and the atmosphere was elegant. We started with a cheese fondue with bread and fruit. Our main course was shrimp, scallops, and lobster with a variety of vegetables. It was all served with 8 different sauces. Dessert was espresso and chocolate fondue with fruit, pound cake, and roasted marshmallows.

A quick cab ride back to the hotel, and we fell into bed for the best night’s sleep I can remember in a long time.