HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The architecture of Chicago from the water
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing
WORD OF THE DAY: We have been so lucky…… Lady Luck
Looking out the lounge room windows this morning Cheryl and I knew we were going to have a good day today. Just how amazing was even beyond what we would ever believe. I phoned Zeme this morning to make sure my phone worked to Ethiopia and just how much it would cost me. After speaking to him for7 minutes it only cost me 4USD, so it was far cheaper than what I was paying on my German sim, which I was hoping that would be the case. I also worked out that the international package includes 500 minutes of talk time overseas, but only to certain countries, which of course Ethiopia is not one of them. I’m also not receiving texts from Zeme which is super frustrating but I only have 52 days to go so I just need to hang in there. Never mind, I am just happy I have a phone back. I got some numbers from Facebook but I literally have lost everyone, so I will have to FB everyone to get their numbers back.
After a wonderful breakfast cooked by Cheryl we got ready and walked the 5 minutes to the L (Loop train) and as we came up the steps we just missed one but they come every 7-10 minutes anyway so we didn’t have to wait long for the next one to come along. Our first stop was to get tickets for the theatre tonight for Jersey Boys the Musical. Cheryl had looked online and seen the cost of the tickets was around 56USD but thought we would go into the box office and see if they had ‘day of’ tickets. Well we were lucky and we got row 5 seats for 25USD a ticket. 25 BUCKS!!!! That has to be the deal of the season surely? Cheryl was totally stoked and was on a high for the rest of the afternoon just based on that transaction. Cheryl had seen the show before in London, but enjoyed it that much that she was happy to see it again as it was fabulous and hence the excitement level. So with those tickets in our hot little hands we then walked along Michigan Avenue, past Trump Tower where we planned to have a drink in their lounge later in the afternoon and down to the river to where the cruise left from. We purchased our tickets for 38USD and at this point it was 11.45am and the next cruise was at 12 noon. Talk about perfect timing. So by the time we got the tickets we could go straight onto the boat and find a seat. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and if anything it was a little on the toasty side, but once the boat got moving there would be a breeze and it would cool us down. Cheryl went down to the bar and purchased us a cocktail each and 10 minutes later we were on our way.
There is a guide on the cruise that is The CAF certified (Chicago Architectural Foundation) and is a volunteer tour guide, also called docents that over the next 90 minutes interpret more than 50 buildings along the Chicago River, revealing how the city grew from a small back-country outpost into one of the world’s most important crossroads in less than 100 years. The guide provided an overview of historic and modern architectural styles, plus many stories about the people who designed and built our city. All tours depart from Riverside Gardens, Michigan Ave. and Wacker Dr. (Southeast corner of the Michigan Avenue Bridge). The Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise aboard Chicago's First Lady Cruises glides smoothly along all three branches of the Chicago River. Our vessels cruise safely under 13 Chicago River bridges and offer you and your guests an amazing view of Chicago's world renowned architecture. The bridges had around a 1cm clearance, the boats only just fir under all of them and we were told in the safety briefing that we were to stand up or to try and touch the bridges as we went under them, that is how tight it was. Chicago has 23 draw bridges in Chicago, the most in the world and they are all still in working order. To see the buildings from the water just gave you a different perspective of them all and they really are magnificent structures and to hear the history from the guide from the owners, to the buildings to the facts and figures was so interesting and after trying to keep notes I gave up after the first 10 minutes as there was just too much information to keep up and I was also trying to take my pictures and with a cocktail in my hand, the pad and paper had to take a back seat and we just kicked back with the sun on skin, the breeze in our hair and enjoy the next 90 minutes.
The most interesting buildings to note:
The Old Chicago Main Post Office is a nine-story-tall building built in 1921. The original structure was a brick-sided mail terminal building. Major expansion in 1932 added a total of nine floors for more than 60 acres, or 2.5 million square feet (230,000 m²) of floor space. In 1966 the Main Chicago Post Office came to a virtual halt when a logjam of 10 million pieces of mail clogged the system for almost one whole week. With Chicago rated worst in postal deliveries, a new Main Post Office was proposed. In 1997, the old building was vacated in favor of the new, modernized facility. A February 2006 report by the General Accounting Office stated that it cost the government $2 million a year to maintain the retired building. The postal service was placing the post office on the auction block on August 27 and the auction raised $40 million, which was well over the opening bid of $300,000. The buyer was reported to be English real estate developer Bill Davies. While Davies missed an October 10, 2009 deadline to close the deal, he finally acquired the building on October 21, 2009, paying about $17 million. Exactly nine months after acquiring the post office property from the Postal Service, Bill Davies unveiled his plan for the Post Office on July 21st, 2011. The proposal, which involved three other properties besides the 14-story Post Office, was broken down into three-phases pending the required $3.5 billion in funding. • Phase 1: Converting the Post Office into a retail complex (Approximate cost: $450 million)Phase 2: Building an addition 60-story hotel west of the Post Office and a 120-story, 2000 ft. office, hotel, and residential tower that would be the tallest in North America. (Approximate cost: $2 billion)• Phase 3: Two residential towers built on the east side of the Chicago River diagonally southeast from the proposed 120-story skyscraper plus a 12,000 space parking garage. (Approximate cost: $1 billion)
Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago. The complex consists of two high rise corncob-shaped 65-story towers The Marina City complex was designed in 1959 and completed in 1964 at a cost of $36 million. When finished, the two towers were both the tallest residential buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the world. The complex was built as a city within a city, featuring numerous on-site facilities including a theatre, gym, swimming pool, ice rink, bowling alley, several stores and restaurants, and of course, a marina. Marina City apartments are unique in containing almost no interior right angles.
The Merchandise Mart opened in 1930 and was the largest building in the world with 4,000,000 square feet (372,000 m2) of floor space. Previously owned by the Marshall Field family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating vendors and trade under a single roof. The building continues to be a leading retailing and wholesale destination, hosting 20,000 visitors and tenants per day. The Merchandise Mart is so large that it had its own ZIP code (60654) until 2008, when the code began to be shared with part of the surrounding area. In 2010, the building opened up its Design Center showrooms to the public for the first time.
The Wrigley Building is a skyscraper located directly across Michigan Avenue from the Tribune Tower on the Magnificent Mile. It was built to house the corporate headquarters of the Wrigley Company. When ground was broken for the Wrigley Building in 1920, there were no major office buildings north of the Chicago River and the Michigan Avenue Bridge, which spans the river just south of the building, was still under construction. The land was selected by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. to headquarter his gum company. The building was using the shape of the Giralda tower of Seville's Cathedral combined with French Renaissance details. The 130m south tower was completed in April 1921 and the north tower in May 1924. Walkways between the towers were added at the ground level and the third floor. In 1931, another walkway was added at the fourteenth floor to connect to offices of a bank in accordance with a Chicago statute concerning bank branch offices. The two towers, not including the levels below Michigan Avenue, have a combined area of 42,125.3m2.
Fulton House is a former cold storage warehouse converted into a residential building at Wolf Point, Chicago. Fulton House sits at a juncture in the Chicago River known as Wolf Point. Built in 1908 as American Cold Storage Warehouse by Frank Abbott, it was a functional warehouse along the Chicago River. The build's fame came from the conversion as a residential building by Harry Weese and Associates from 1979 to 1981. Originally a window-less Renaissance Revival structure, the 16 story building is now a 106 residential condo/loft. The cruise was just amazing and a well spent 38USD for the 90 minutes.
From the cruise terminal we made our way to Michigan Avenue. This is the main shopping street of Chicago and has all the major brands located here. Michigan Avenue is a major north-south street in Chicago As the home of the Chicago Water Tower, the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, and the Magnificent Mile, it is a street well known to Chicago natives as well as tourists to the city. Michigan Avenue also is the main commercial street of Streeterville. It includes all of the Michigan Boulevard Historic District and most of the Michigan–Wacker Historic District, including the scenic urban space anchored by the Michigan Avenue Bridge. We walked along till we got to Nordstrom’s and Cheryl had a little shoe shopping to do at their half yearly sale and a little makeup to stock up. On our way out we asked the concierge where we could buy a Kindle from. The last few days I have been thinking about how I was going to take booked to Ethiopia. You can buy western books there but they are on the expensive side and lately I have been looking at Ethiopian/African themed books for me to learn more about the country I am going to be calling home. So with more than 10 books on my list so far, the logistics of getting them to Addis is looking quite difficult, I have decided to invest in a Kindle and while in the USA it makes perfect sense to get one while I am here. It really is the perfect solution. I have held off buying one for years as I do like the old fashioned paper backs, but practicality needs to come in to play and it just makes sense and it has nothing to do with the fact that it is another gadget I don’t have. Really…. So with directions in hand we made our way back onto Michigan in search of Best Buys where I bought my phone from yesterday. Well little did we know that the shop was located on the ground floor of the John Hancock building, which is the 3rd largest building in Chicago. I hadn’t done too much homework except I knew that there was a new Kindle out that was in colour, but after seeing it in the shop, it looked very much like my Playbook that I had so I decided to go for the black and white mid-range version that holds 3000 books. The bottom range version only held 1500 books, pfffff. Within 15 minutes I was the proud owner of a Kindle, a pink cover and a 25USD voucher for the store. Cheryl said we pretty much shop the same. We know what we want; we walk in, buy it and walk out. So while we were in the John Hancock building we decided to have our afternoon drink here and Trump would have to wait another day to rip us off 15 bucks for a drink.
The John Hancock Center is a skyscraper located in the city. 344m tall, the building was completed in 1969, and was the tallest skyscraper in the world outside New York . Its structure reinforced with braces, saves steel construction, and make the building withstand winds of 193 km / h. It is the third tallest building in Chicago and the fourth largest in the United States after the Sears Tower , Aon Center and the Empire State Building . The building houses offices and restaurants. One of the most recognizable landmarks in the skyline seen from Lake Michigan , with its trapezoidal black color, and the two antennas that crown. The 95th floor houses a restaurant called "The Signature Room on the 95th Floor" and we made our thirsty way to the bar to have a cocktail after the successful day we had had so far. The bar was mega busy. All the window facing seats were full and all the tables that lined the floor to ceiling glass windows were also taken. Darn it maybe our luck was about to run out. After doing a sweep of the left section and I was taking pictures from the right section a table came up just next to the windows and we pounced. It was like it was meant to be and after looking at a menu we ordered a cocktail, a glass of wine and something to eat to keep us going till after the show tonight. The view from up here was INCREDIBLE. Looking up one side of the building, we could see the beaches that could been Hawaii and to the right with the city view, all the buildings we had seen from the water we now had a bird’s eye view from here and they all looked so small. While we enjoyed our food and drinks we could see through the windows the beautiful view of Chicago and Lake Michigan and I had a WOW moment here. We were so lucky to have gotten a table as hoards of people kept walking past us, staking out our table and seeing where we were up to eating and drinking. It was a marvelous way to finish off a marvelous day and the luck we had with timings and weather was just unbelievable.
So after nearly an hour here, on the 95th floor, soaking up the atmosphere, the view and our company it was time to head home to have a small rest, change, pick up Joe and then head back into the city for the show tonight. We were still on a high from the 25USD row 5 tickets!!! We walked back up Michigan Avenue, it was busy now as peak hour had started to kick in with all the workers heading home and when we got to the L, we literally waited 1 minute and the next train came and I got a seat and Cheryl did after 2 stops. Our timing luck continued and we were home in 20 minutes!
It was nice to take a load off as we had done a lot of walking and at 6.45pm we were back on the ‘L’ and 15 minutes later we were back where we started this morning at The Bank of America Theatre. Formerly known as the LaSalle Bank Theatre, the Sam Shubert Theatre and the Majestic Theatre. The theater presents touring Broadway shows. The theatre opened in 1906 as the Majestic Theatre, named for The Majestic Building in which it was housed. The Majestic was originally a popular vaudeville theater. It offered some 12-15 vaudville acts running from 1:30 pm to 10:30 pm, six days a week. By the 1920s the theater had become part of the Orpheum Circuit and presented many famous vaudeville headliners including Eddie Foy, Harry Houdini, Lily Langtry, and Fanny Brice. In 1932, the theatre closed during the Great Depression. In 1945, the theatre was purchased by the Shubert Organization, remodeled, and reopened as the Sam Shubert Theatre. Between January 2005 and May 2006, the theatre underwent restoration and a name change to the LaSalle Bank Theatre. The theater now hosts pre-Broadway productions and world premieres. In May 2008, the theater was renamed the Bank of America Theatre, as LaSalle Bank was acquired by that company in 2007. We were early, so we bought a drink and decoded to take our seats and people watch before the show. The theatre is just stunning and I went to take a photo and hot my head snapped off by an usher. NO PHOTOGRAPHY. Well I have to say there is way to tell people and that was just plain embarrassing. In my defence there were no signs telling us to not take photos and the show was nowhere near starting so I couldn’t see the issue. After we had taken our row 5 seats I had great pleasure with other people also getting into trouble as they went to snap so it didn’t make me feel so bad.
We were here to see Jersey Boys and I have heard a lot of good reports on the show. Jersey Boys is a jukebox musical and is a documentary-style musical, based on one of the most successful 1960s rock 'n roll groups, the Four Seasons. The musical opened on Broadway in 2005, and has since had a North American National Tour, along with productions in London's West End, Las Vegas, Chicago, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney, and Philadelphia and currently in Auckland. Jersey Boys won four 2006 Tony Awards including Best Musical. The Broadway production has had 38 previews and 2241 performances as of April 10, 2011. On June 25, 2011 the musical became the 25th longest-running show on Broadway. The story dramatizes the forming, rise and eventual break-up of the original four members of The Four Seasons. The musical is separated into four "seasons", each narrated by a different member of the band. Act 1 comprises Spring (Tommy DeVito) & Summer (Bob Gaudio); Act 2 comprises Fall (Nick Massi) & Winter (Frankie Valli); each member has a different perspective on the band and his contribution to it. I didn’t realize just how many songs I recognized as the Four Seasons and I think the most popular that has been used and heard the most would be the Oh What a Night, late December back in sixty three…… I tapped and sang my way through the whole performance and I have to say I really enjoyed the whole show. It was a little hard for me at the start to follow Tommy, his accent was apparently true New York Italian and to grasp what he was saying was hard, but I did get the hang of it and the rest was amazing. I haven’t been to many musicals but I should have made a bigger effort as I really have enjoyed the 2 I have seen the other being Priscilla that I saw in London last year at the Palace Theatre.
When the show had finished and we were swept back onto the street the 3 of us were ravenous. We jumped a cab and drove a few blocks to a restaurant bar that had been recommended but they were about to close as they had been dead all night the manager had sent all the staff home, so we walked to Lou Manati’s just at the end of the block and I was shown what a ‘Chicago’ pizza looked and tasted like. Lou Malnati's Pizzeria is an American family-owned Chicago-style pizza restaurant and was founded by the son of Rudy Malnati, who was instrumental in developing the recipe for Chicago-style pizza, and it has become one of the Chicago area's best-known local line of pizza restaurants. Lou Malnati began working with his father Rudy in the 1940s making deep-dish pizza. In the 1950s they co-managed Pizzeria Uno. As of October 2011, Lou Malnati's owns and operates 33 stores in the greater Chicago area. Lou Malnati's is a prototypical Chicago style pizza. A thin crust of pizza dough is laid in a seasoned deep-dish pizza pan and raised up on the sides. The ingredients are placed on a Chicago style deep-dish pizza in the opposite order of a thin crust pizza. The first ingredient is thick slices of mozzarella cheese that are placed directly on the dough. Then additional ingredients like mushrooms, onions and sausage are spread on top of the cheese. The pizza is then topped with a tomato sauce made with whole chunks of tomatoes. A "Lou-Mal" pie uses a "sausage patty," a single patty of Italian sausage below the layer of tomato chunks or sauce, as opposed to the more traditional crumbled sausage and this is what we decided to share between the 3 of us and just as well as we got 2 slices each and they are really filling with the thickness of the pizza was all you would need. It was delicious and nothing you have ever seen before, it really was a Chicago pizza and another thing now that I can say I ate while I was here. It is a shame that David wasn’t here as he loves Lou Manati’s pizzas.
By the time we got out of there it was after 11.30pm and Cheryl and I were knackered. What an amazing day. I heart Chicago. Sometimes it reminds me a little of New York with the buildings, the shows and the shops but cleaner somehow. WE will definitely sleep like babies tonight that is for sure and thanks Cheryl for an AMAZING DAY!!!!!!
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