Saturday 24 June 2023
Today we paddled on the Chicago River. It was my birthday treat which had been booked for the Sunday but the weather and wind forecast looked shabby, so Kayak Chicago let us swap to the Saturday. We hired a tandem and had the most awesome time paddling down the canal and then onto the main Chicago River.
I just love being on the water low down, smelling and tasting the water (although I try not to swallow this stuff) and watching the birds and water insects flutter past. On the main river we had to play dodge the tourist ship at times which made it even more fun ;-)
We walked back through part of the industrial area of Goose Island with its bridge going nowhere. I do love the fact, though, that someone has erected the signs stating "Caution active rail, yield to trains". Also, because I can't resist photographing these, is a benchmark on a wall - all the others I'd seen had been in the pavement - but this one was just for levelling.
Anyway, back to the holiday stuff. We started a self-guided tour of downtown Chicago to see how many of the architectural sites we could see. The main hall of the Central Station was shut for a private function, but we enjoyed crossing the river (again, again) and seeing the reflections on the skyscrapers. The one on the right, below, is my favourite as it has a map of the Chicago waterways on the side facing the river including a little red blob where the building is - how cool is that?
We came around a corner to see a wedding party standing in the middle of the road with the impressive Chicago Board of Trade building as a backdrop. I just can't imagine a wedding party standing in the middle of any UK roads and not getting honked and beeped off the road by an aggressive road user. I'm not going to try it anyway.
We then (drum roll please) bumped into the vertical datum point of Chicago! Even JC was excited to see it, but I think it was vicarious excitement as I was a very happy Ruth. It is 17.64 feet below the corner sprayed orange.
Even the Picasso sculpture afterwards couldn't beat that - but it's quite funky and, strangely, has no name as Picasso never gave it one.
The architecture is really wonderful in this area. I loved the iron work on this shop, the Sullivan Centre, built at the end of the 19th Century. Another beautiful building, the Carbide and Carbon building, is a wonderful example of Art Deco architecture. It is clad in black granite, green and gold terracotta, with gold leaf and bronze trim, and some suggest it was designed to look like a champagne bottle, although not from this angle.
Another turn of the 19th Century building is the Marquette building. Our guidebook encouraged us to stick our nose inside and the concierge kindly let us in for a peep. The lobby has wonderful Tiffany mosaics.
The Chicago Theatre is beautifully snazzy, and the glitzy frontage on the right actually hosts a Starbucks.
We decided that it wasn't a proper trip to Chicago unless we'd had a pizza. We got lucky as Pizzeria Due, a famous Chicago eatery, had a table for two outside. JC had a 'proper' deep pan pizza and I was happy with a gluten free one.
The evening wasn't over yet. We went back down to the river for night photography.
And enjoyed a night light show, Art on the Mart, projected onto a riverside building. It is allegedly the largest permanent projected art work in the world. Certainly a lot of fun to watch!
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