Monday 19 June 2023
JC worked in Chicago for a couple of years as a post doc in the 2000's and has wanted to return for a trip down memory lane. I'm always up for an explore of somewhere new, so off we went. The flight to Chicago was unremarkable, which is pretty much how I like my flights. On landing we had to wait an hour to get to our gate as another Airbus380 had parked in our slot, having had a technical fault so had returned to O'Hare and nabbed our spot. So we crawled stop/start hanging around until our gate was free, probably managing something ~1 km in an hour which is my slowest ever in an Airbus. Once off we bundled into a humungous passport queue, which slithered past the queue barriers then double backed on itself with 100s of tired and hot people in it. Fortunately it moved reasonably fast and it only took us 45 minutes. New (to us) airports are always disorientating and it took us a while to extract ourselves using their internal train then the metro: we eventually made it to our AirBnB after an 18 hour journey.
Tuesday 20 June 2023 - University Day
Today was university day but first off we had to orientate ourselves. It was exciting standing at our local metro station to see the big city on the horizon.
Once downtown we had to find our way to an overground train and ended up in some sort of twilight underground network of shops and passages underneath the main downtown area. Pretty confusing but nice mosaics ;-)
We went down to Hyde Park, ~10 km south of the main city, where the university campus is. First stop was finding where JC used to live. He regaled me with stories of where he used to study, eat, visit and how hot/cold it got as the seasons progressed. He also pointed out the emergency phones dotted around the campus which are for students to ring if they ever feel unsafe.
The central campus.
We passed the spot where the first chain reaction occurred in 1942. The building has since been demolished - as, sadly, had JC's astrophysics building - but a plaque and memorial mark the spot.
I was beginning to notice that there were numerous types of police. In the UK we tend to only see one type of police force, but here there were police patrols for various institutions: and this is the university set.
One of the art deco houses Frank Lloyd Wright designed, Robie House, was nearby but sadly it was closed.
After lunch we walked down to Jackson Park, a beautiful, quiet park and a hit with the Canada geese.
We lacked a bit of a plan at this stage so headed back downtown and this time managed to find our way out to street level. The Millennium Park - new to JC - was bustling with tourists and we enjoyed the Cloud Gate, known as 'The Bean'.
Very weird to stand inside it and look up! And can you see us?
Nearby is Crown Fountain. This consists of two structures with water cascading down them, and thereby spraying passerbys (very nice in the heat), with animations on the inner faces. The animations change and occasionally the lips purse and water shoots out much to the delighted squeals of the kids below.
My body was ready for a nap by now as we'd been on our feet most of the day, and I'd been awake since 0600 due to the jet lag and hadn't recovered my sleep. JC, however, was just warming up and was relishing a night photo shoot. Unfortunately we managed to time our Chicago trip over the summer solstice so the sun didn't set until 2030 and it didn't really get dark until well after 2100. My feet were sore as I'd worn the wrong shoes (not realising how much walking we'd be doing), I was tired, the wind had picked up so I was cold and I certainly wasn't the happiest bunny awaiting the photographer to take his shots that evening.
Our accommodation was a 20 minute metro ride and then a 20 minute walk so it wasn't really something I could pop back to easily. Admittedly the views were awesome, and I know JC has fabulous photos, I was just so very tired. But the views were great!
No comments:
Post a Comment