Chicago - Art culture, golf goofing and a victorious fountain

Thursday 22 June 2023

Today JC chose our first activity today, a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.  However, before we got there I was desperate to find a Tourist Information.  Strangely enough they are very hard to come by in Chicago.  I'm used to railway stations and tourist areas having kiosks with maps and guides, but I just couldn't find any.  After a google, I discovered there was one in the ginormous Macey's and we walked in to find yet another wonderful Tiffany ceiling.  I also found a heap of maps and guides which made me very happy.

Anyway, back to Art.  It was a lovely museum entrance, and then we headed for JC's favourite, ancient Asian (mainly Chinese) art.

He has a love of their old porcelain and pots which I don't share - at home he has an old Chinese saucer (which I thought was just a random old bit of pottery) which I planned to as a ring tray until he exclaimed how precious it was to him.  So he pottered around ooh'ing and aah'ing: I tried to understand, but needless to say I forgot to take any photos.

I was more engaged when the stained glass appeared, America Windows by Marc Chagall and stained glass by Frank Lloyd Wright (remember him from Tuesday?).

Not to mention the Hartwell Memorial window, another Tiffany marvel, relocated from a church in Rhode Island.

We sauntered through the galleries - a Monet here and a Turner there.

Renoir and Collier (picture loved for its subject matter).

Seurat and Van Gogh

Matisse and Picasso

Pollock and Kandinsky

I loved most of these (the last two are lovely) but then it got a bit too modern for me...

Hockney and Litchenstein

Baer (piece is called Brilliant Yellow) and Hesse (piece is called The Hang Up).  This latter piece had a museum attendant watching it, I think to stop people swinging on it.  I asked her if people regularly tripped over it and she just looked at me, unsmiling, as if I was an idiot.

Anyway, once I was all cultured up - my lack of art knowledge never ceases to amaze JC - we headed for a Ruth treat, mini golf.  It was an 18 hole course and I was comprehensively beaten by JC which made me more irked than it should. I'm not a great loser!

A bit more traipsing around Millennium Park (and its Pritzker stadium) and a sad and unloved paper-stand, superseded by modern life and now used as a bin.

Then it was down to Adams Street (yay) for supper in the famous https://www.theberghoff.com/.  

The evening was not yet over as the sun had set and JC had plans.  We headed down to the Buckingham Fountain which we knew was lit up at night.  What we had forgotten was at 2100 (and perhaps at other times) there is a water display.  The speakers surrounding the fountain suddenly spluttered into life broadcasting loud up-beat classical music, reminding me of Vietnam and their communist style tannoy broadcasts.  The foundation spurted up and the light show was pretty magnificent.

More night train shots followed.  JC's will be far more awesome than mine, but mine did only take a smidgen of the time to take ;-)

Chicago - On the water, a disappointing 0,0 and getting high

Wednesday 21 June 2023

The first adventure for the day was an architectural river cruise.  Before this, our first discovery of the day was that Chicago's transit system has stations with duplicate names.  So we hopped on the blue line and jumped off at Grand only to discover there was more than one Grand (there's also one on the red line).  In fact, on closer inspection, there are 3 Chicagos, 3 Cicero, 3 Pulaskis etc.  I get the logic of naming them after the streets they sit on, but it's so very confusing.  It's not even that each colour line only has one of each colour - the blue line has two Harlems, so wow betide you if you get on in the centre of Chicago and head for the wrong Harlem!

Anyway, we'd left enough time so made our cruise in time.  I'm rarely happier than when on a boat - I love being close to the water level pottering along.  Ours was an architectural tour, and big impressive buildings is certainly something Chicago is not lacking.  

We initially headed down to the lock gates separating the river from the lake, noting that we were last on the pecking order for priority here.

We sailed back up the river marvelling at the skyscrapers and the amazing bridges spanning the river.  Fun fact - the river flow was reversed in the early 1900s by building a canal through a small watershed to the Des Plaines River.  This prevented sewage and other soiled water from flowing into the lake - this would not have been a fun fact for those residents of Lockport, new recipients of the unwanted effluence of Chicago.  Fun fact 2 - when rainfall has been super high they occasionally re-reverse the flow of the river to allow water to drain out into Lake Michigan and help prevent flooding downtown.

Apparently it's rare to see a bridge lifted.  They usually only raise them twice a year - once to let all the yachts out of the marina and later to let them all back in.

Oooh, train on a bridge, and a much loved favourite.

This was a rare example of a bridge which lifted up horizontally rather than the more common swing bridges.  I certainly would not be keen to live here.

Another few old swing bridges on the southern and northern branches - left high to keep them out of the way (and look arty).

We headed down to the downtown area called The Loop for lunch.  This is the central CBD, Central Business District, and where the L transit line does a loop overhead.  Makes for lovely road shadows.

We also navigated ourselves down to the zero point of Chicago, as in the point where the names of the streets turn from East-something to West-something, and where the Norths turned to Souths - the junction of Maddison and State Streets.  Sadly it was very unexciting and nobody had thought to put up a small plague to reward me for my efforts.

I did however find a benchmark on a wall, my first!  And then, a while later, found one in the pavement.  This latter find I deemed "less proper" than the first which was installed by the US Geological Survey, whereas the second was by the highways team of Cook Country (sorry if you're reading Cook surveyors).

We also made time to visit the Cultural Hall of Chicago, mainly because we knew it had a magnificent Tiffany style domes inside, and I'm a bit of a sucker for these sort of things.

The grand finale to the day was ascending the Hancock 360 degree tower for sunset and night views.  I love getting high to orientate myself and it was amazing.  I am definitely getting old as my vertigo, once ignorable, prevented me from getting near the windows for the first 30 minutes.  JC kept finding me in the middle browsing the shop goodies.  Once my world stopped wobbling I was able to sit near a window and enjoy the vista as the sun set.