I HEART Chicago

I had never been to Chicago before and I had the 2 best guides in the business, my United Hostee's Cheryl and David.  I had an amazing week with them in their amazing city and if you haven't been here before add it to your US itinerary-you won't regret it.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT WAS A GENIUS AND LEAD A COLORFUL LIFE

WEATHER: Cooler and cloudy at 20C, rain held off-just  

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The sausages and peppers made by Cheryl for my last dinner

BUMMER OF THE DAY: It’s my last day in Chicago and with the ‘gang’

WORD OF THE DAY:  Frank Lloyd Wright

A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month.  It is the 1^st of June today.  I officially leave the USA on the 20^th of June and I arrive back into Australia on the 22^nd June.  I am coming home this month. HOLY SCHMOKES!!!  It still hasn’t hit me yet and I am just going to enjoy my last days of my World Odyssey and then think about life after Odyssey, which I am thankful I still have 5 weeks in the UK and Africa still ahead of me and not a boring daily grind of an Australian life-I don’t think I could ever go back to that after what I have seen and done on my trip and now want to try and help or do something that will make a difference to a person, people or families. 

Our only mission today was to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright house and his studio.  We had booked tickets online on Wednesday and hoped that the weather was going to be nothing like it was yesterday.  There were two parts to the tour.  There was a self- guided tour of the neighborhood where he built his first house and then continued to build a bevy of homes in the same suburb over the years.  The self-guided was a walking tour to these homes and the second part was a guided tour of his original house and studio.  This was something that Cheryl had always wanted to do this tour and had just never got around to it, so I was happy that she was doing something new and David hadn’t done the tour for a few years so it was all a new experience for us all.  Same with the last few day, it had been over 15 years since David had been to the Willis (Sears) Tower, years since they had been to the Pump Room and years since they had done the Architectural cruise.  Like anyone living in their own cities, you tend to not do things until an out of towner arrives to make you appreciate just what you do have to see in your own city.  I think everyone is guilty of that.  It took me years after living in the NT to make a trip to see Ayers Rock and Kakadu was like our backyard.  People travel from all around the world to see Kakadu and we are just like, yeah-its Kakadu. 

We were recommended to get to Franks house at 12.20pm so we had enough time to do the self-guided tour and be back in time at 2pm for the guided tour of his house.  We were given a map of the area with Franks houses marked on them and an MP3 player that had all the information on each house as we walked to each one.  We were reminded that people live in these houses and to be respectful of that when we are looking at their homes and that we were only to look at the outside of the homes, there was no internal visits into any of them bar Franks House and studio when we returned. 

So who is Frank Lloyd Wright?  Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.  His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."

On June 1, 1889, Wright married his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin (1871–1959). The two had met around a year earlier during activities at All Souls Church. Sullivan did his part to facilitate the financial success of the young couple by granting Wright a five-year employment contract. Wright made one more request: "Mr. Sullivan, if you want me to work for you as long as five years, couldn't you lend me enough money to build a little house?” With Sullivan's $5,000 loan, Wright purchased a lot at the corner of Chicago and Forest Avenues in the suburb of Oak Park.   Despite Sullivan's loan and overtime salary, Wright was constantly short on funds. Wright admitted that his poor finances were likely due to his expensive tastes in wardrobe and vehicles, and the extra luxuries he designed into his house. To compound the problem, Wright's children – including first born Lloyd (b.1890) and John (b.1892) – would share similar tastes for fine goods. To supplement his income and repay his debts, Wright accepted independent commissions for at least nine houses. These "bootlegged" houses, as he later called them, were conservatively designed in variations of the fashionable Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Nevertheless, unlike the prevailing architecture of the period, each house emphasized simple geometric massing and contained features such as bands of horizontal windows, occasional cantilevers, and open floor plans which would become hallmarks of his later work. Eight of these early houses remain today.   

Wright designed his bootleg houses on his own time. Sullivan knew nothing of the independent works until 1893, when he recognized that one of the houses was unmistakably a Frank Lloyd Wright design. This particular house, built for Allison Harlan, was only blocks away from Sullivan's townhouse in the Chicago community of Kenwood. Aside from the location, the geometric purity of the composition and balcony tracery in the same style as the Charnley House likely gave away Wright's involvement. Since Wright's five year contract forbade any outside work, the incident led to his departure from Sullivan's firm.  After leaving Louis Sullivan, Wright established his own practice on the top floor of the Sullivan designed Schiller Building (1892, demolished 1961) on Randolph Street in Chicago. Wright chose to locate his office in the building because the tower location reminded him of the office of Adler & Sullivan. Although Cecil Corwin followed Wright and set up his architecture practice in the same office, the two worked independently and did not consider themselves partners. Within a year, Corwin decided that he did not enjoy architecture and journeyed east to find a new profession. Marion Mahony, who in 1895 transferred to Wright's team of drafters and took over production of his presentation drawings and watercolor renderings. Mahony, the first licensed female architect in the United States also designed furniture, leaded glass windows, and light fixtures, among other features, for Wright's houses. Between 1894 and the early 1910s, several other leading Prairie School architects and many of Wright's future employees launched their careers in the offices of Steinway Hall.

Wright relocated his practice to his home in 1898 in order to bring his work and family lives closer. This move made further sense as the majority of the architect's projects at that time were in Oak Park or neighboring River Forest. The past five years had seen the birth of three more children – Catherine in 1894, David in 1895, and Frances in 1898 – prompting Wright to sacrifice his original home studio space for additional bedrooms. Thus, moving his workspace necessitated his design and construction of an expansive studio addition to the north of the main house. The space, which included a hanging balcony within the two story drafting room, was one of Wright's first experiments with innovative structure. The studio was a poster for Wright's developing aesthetics and would become the laboratory from which the next ten years of architectural creations would emerge. By 1901, Wright had completed about 50 projects, including many houses in Oak Park. Wright's residential designs were "Prairie Houses" because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses featured extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces all using unfinished materials. The houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan". Windows whenever possible are long, and low, allowing a connection between the interior and nature, outside, that was new to western architecture and reflected the influence of Japanese architecture on Wright. The manipulation of interior space in residential and public buildings are hallmarks of his style.

Local gossips noticed Wright's flirtations, and he developed a reputation in Oak Park as a man-about-town. His family had grown to six children, and the brood required most of Catherine's attention. In 1903, Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah Cheney was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for almost 20 years. Often the two could be seen taking rides in Wright's automobile through Oak Park, and they became the talk of the town. Wright's wife, Kitty, sure that this attachment would fade as the others had, refused to grant him a divorce. Neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even before the Robie House was completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney went together to Europe, leaving their own spouses and children behind. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States.  What drew Wright to Europe was the chance to publish a portfolio of his work with Ernst Wasmuth, who had agreed in 1909 to publish his work there.  This chance also allowed Wright to deepen his relationship with Mamah Cheney. Wright and Cheney left the United States in 1909 going to Berlin, where the offices of Wasmuth were located.  Wright remained in Europe for almost one year and set up home first in Florence, Italy – where he lived with his eldest son Lloyd – and later in Fiesole, Italy where he lived with Mamah. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted Mamah a divorce, though Kitty still refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright's return to the United States in October 1910, Wright persuaded his mother to buy land for him in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The land, bought on April 10, 1911, was adjacent to land held by his mother's family, the Lloyd-Joneses.

Wright began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin, by May 1911. The recurring theme of Taliesin also came from his mother's side: Taliesin in Welsh mythology was a poet, magician, and priest. The family motto was Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd which means "The Truth Against the World"; it was created by Iolo Morgannwg who also had a son called Taliesin, and the motto is still used today as the cry of the druids and chief bard of the Eisteddfod in Wales.  On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a workman; and another workman's son. Two people survived the mayhem, one of whom helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house. Carlton swallowed muriatic acid immediately following the attack in an attempt to kill himself. He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail. Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack, despite medical attention.  In 1922, Wright's first wife, Kitty, granted him a divorce, and Wright was required to wait one year until he married his then-partner, Maude "Miriam" Noel. In 1923, Wright's mother, Anna (Lloyd Jones) Wright, died. Wright wed Miriam Noel in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the separation but while still married, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg at a Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, and soon Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna, born on December 2, 1925.  On April 20, 1925, another fire destroyed the bungalow at Taliesin. Crossed wires from a newly installed telephone system were deemed to be responsible for the blaze, which destroyed a collection of Japanese prints that Wright declared invaluable. Wright estimated the loss at $250,000 to $500,000. Wright rebuilt the living quarters again, naming the home "Taliesin III".

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City occupied Wright for 16 years (1943–1959) and is probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building rises as a warm beige spiral from its site on Fifth Avenue; its interior is similar to the inside of a seashell. Its unique central geometry was meant to allow visitors to easily experience Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective geometric paintings by taking an elevator to the top level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp, which features a floor embedded with circular shapes and triangular light fixtures to complement the geometric nature of the structure. Unfortunately, when the museum was completed, a number of important details of Wright's design were ignored, including his desire for the interior to be painted off-white. Furthermore, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway rather than walking down from the top level.  Wright designed over 400 built structures of which about 300 survive as of 2005.

Though most famous as an architect, Wright was an active dealer in Japanese art, primarily ukiyo-e woodblock prints. He frequently served as both architect and art dealer to the same clients; "he designed a home, then provided the art to fill it". For a time, Wright made more from selling art than from his work as an architect.  Wright first traveled to Japan in 1905, where he bought hundreds of prints. The following year, he helped organize the world's first retrospective exhibition of works by Hiroshige, held at the Art Institute of Chicago. For many years, he was a major presence in the Japanese art world, selling a great number of works to prominent collectors such as John Spaulding of Boston, and to prominent museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He penned a book on Japanese art in 1912.  In 1920, however, rival art dealers began to spread rumors that Wright was selling retouched prints; this combined with Wright's tendency to live beyond his means, and other factors, led to great financial troubles for the architect. Though he provided his clients with genuine prints as replacements for those he was accused of retouching, this marked the end of the high point of his career as an art dealer. He was forced to sell off much of his art collection in 1927 to pay off outstanding debts; the Bank of Wisconsin claimed his Taliesin home the following year, and sold thousands of his prints, for only one dollar a piece, to collector Edward Burr Van Vleck.  Wright continued to collect, and deal in, prints until his death in 1959, frequently using prints as collateral for loans, frequently relying upon his art business to remain financially solvent.  The extent of his dealings in Japanese art went largely unknown, or underestimated, among art historians for decades until, in 1980, Julia Meech, then associate curator of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum, began researching the history of the museum's collection of Japanese prints. She discovered "a three-inch-deep 'clump of 400 cards' from 1918, each listing a print bought from the same seller—'F. L. Wright'" and a number of letters exchanged between Wright and the museum's first curator of Far Eastern Art, Sigisbert C. Bosch Reitz, in 1918 to 1922. These discoveries, and subsequent research, led to a renewed understanding of Wright's career as an art dealer.

Turmoil followed Wright even many years after his death on April 9, 1959, while undergoing surgery in Phoenix, Arizona, to remove an intestinal obstruction. His third wife, Olgivanna, ran the Fellowship after Wright's death, until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1985. That year, it was learned that her dying wish had been that Wright, she, and her daughter by a first marriage all be cremated and relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona. By then, Wright's body had laid for over 25 years in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, near Taliesin, Wright's later-life home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Olgivanna's plan called for a memorial garden, already in the works, to be finished and prepared for their remains. Although the garden had yet to be finished, his remains were prepared and sent to Scottsdale where they waited in storage for an unidentified amount of time before being interred in the memorial area. Today, the small cemetery south of Spring Green, Wisconsin and a long stone's throw from Taliesin, contains a gravestone marked with Wright's name, though its grave is empty.

It is funny as we walked the 18 homes of the area that none of his personal life was mentioned, it was purely all about his works, homes and architecture.  David knew there was some sort of scandal but couldn’t remember the details, but it looks like Frank led quite a colorful life.  The weather was a little chilly on the 1.5 hour walk, but it didn’t rain so we were happy to take the chilly over the rain any day.  It was a good idea what the FLW (Frank Lloyd Wright) Foundation has done, with a map and the MP3 player to walk our way around the neighborhood.  Considering how many people a day do this tour it is surprising how the map and the audio don’t really match up to start with until you work out that you need to listen to the next houses intro to get the address before you even get to that home and the map only has the house numbers on them and not any addresses so if you are not sure where you are the map is rendered useless.  It took us around 6 houses to work out what the hell was happening and then got a system happening.  All the homes had a wow factor.  They are distinctly FLW; you can pick his homes from a mile away.  As we were standing out the front of one of the homes listening to the information the owner of the home drove out of their drive way not even giving us a second glance.  I guess that comes with the territory if you buy a FLW home and especially in the Oak Park suburb you are going to have 100’s of people a week staring at the front of your home. 

Not only did FLW do homes but also churches and public buildings and we saw one on our walk.  Public buildings in the Prairie style include Unity Temple, the home of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Oak Park. As a lifelong Unitarian and member of Unity Temple, Wright offered his services to the congregation after their church burned down in 1905. The community agreed to hire him and he worked on the building from 1905 to 1909. Wright later said that Unity Temple was the edifice in which he ceased to be an architect of structure, and became an architect of space. Many architects consider it the world's first modern building, because of its unique construction of only one material: reinforced concrete.  We were back to FLW house with 15 minutes to spare before the guided tour started, so it gave the guy’s time to shop in the gift store and I rested my feet.  Just before the tour started I was presented with a magnet with one of Franks well known glass patterns from Cheryl and David.  It meant so much and every time I look at the magnet now I will think of these guys and the absolutely awesome week that I had in their fabulous city of Chicago.  It is hard to imagine I have been here for a week already and that I leave tomorrow.  It makes me sad-I love my United Hostees.

Next was the home and studio tour with our guide who works for the FLW Trust.  Frank Lloyd Wright used his first home to experiment with design concepts that contain the seeds of his architectural philosophy. In his adjacent studio, Wright and his associates developed a new American architecture - the Prairie style. Trained interpreters offer insights into Wright's family life and architectural career.

The inside of his home and studio and all the little tidbits about why he designed things the way he did was so interesting and we all just loved it.  For the first 20 years of Wright's career, this remarkable complex served first and foremost as the sanctuary where he designed and executed more than 130 of 430 completed buildings. The home began as a simple shingled cottage that the 22-year-old Wright built for his bride in 1889, but it became a living laboratory for his revolutionary reinvention of interior spaces. Wright remodeled the house constantly until 1911, when he moved out permanently. During Wright's fertile early period, the house was Wright's showcase, but it also embraces many idiosyncratic features molded to his own needs rather than those of a client. With many add-ons -- including a barrel-vaulted children's playroom and a studio with an octagonal balcony suspended by chains -- the place has a certain whimsy that others might have found less livable. This was not an architect's masterpiece, but rather the master's home and visitors can savor every room for the view it offers into of the workings of a remarkable mind.  The interior tour took just under an hour and when I walked out of the home I knew that this man was a genius but also a little kooky as all of these types of people seemed to be back in the day.  Again on the studio tour, they only spoke of his family and wife from his first marriage, family pictures of the first family and nothing else was spoken about the other wives, children or scandals.  It was a little strange but with such an eventful life the tour would take 3 hours if they were to address everything and I guess at the end of the day we were there for his homes and architecture, but everyone loves a good gossip……

I had a quick look in the gift shop and I found this beautiful stained glass picture, around the size of an A4 piece of paper on a beautiful wooden stand.  I looked at it like 5 times, you know when you want to really buy something and you weigh up all the options and you’re not sure about the purchase.  My concern was how the hell would I get it home, once it was home, how the hell would I get it to Ethiopia.  There was no use buying it if I wasn’t even going to take it to Africa, but I loved it and decided it would be worth the pain to carry it hand luggage for my last 4 flights and then I could take it to Addis on my second trip back after Christmas.  It was worth all the hassle and a fantastic souvenir of my time here.  So when it was boxed it is now twice the size it was originally but I think I will be able to get it on the flights as hand luggage with no issues, and at least it is packed right so less chance of the thing smashing before I get it home and then to its proper home in Addis.

We got back home at 5pm, so it had been another busy last day for us.  I LOVE my new phone as I have now worked out that I have free internet included in my monthly package.  This is what I have missed from back home 24-7 internet access.  I know some of you are thinking why?  But I love being connected, even if it is by my phone and not that user friendly I can get on any time.  I am having problems with sending text messages and getting a sent receipt but the people aren’t getting the message.  I hate this, I would prefer an error message to come up and know that they didn’t get it which is a little frustrating but otherwise it has been the best 50 bucks I have spent.  I was able to get another blog finished before dinner and that was the last one I would be able to do till I now got to Teegs.  I am still chasing my tail and know that I will be busy in Minnie, so I will just have to take good notes and punch out an entry with any spare time.

The final dinner was amazing.  It has been a long long time that I have stayed with someone that enjoys cooking, like to cook rather than having to cook.  It shows in Cheryl food and I love eating it.  As it was the ‘final’ dinner I got sausages and peppers (I LOVE) and Joe got a pasta dish that he loves and David got some veggies that he loves all that washed down with red wine in massive glasses, eating with friends what better way to say thanks for a truly amazing week.  I don’t know how we did it but we also had room for Rocky Road ice-cream which was AMAZING as I’ve never had it before.  David left at 11pm and had decided to come to the airport with Cheryl and I in the morning which is nice of both of them considering they really aren’t morning people.  The bummer to this was it was 11.30pm and I hadn’t done my packing yet…….  My room looked like a bomb had hit it and I had clothes and crap from one end to the other.  Oh well it has to be done and 1 hour and 25 minutes later I had everything in and zipped.  I am really starting to accumulate a lot of stuff, mostly clothes and I haven’t had thing much stuff ever.  The way I have packed I am able to carry everything on my own and not look like a crazy person which also includes the glass panel that I bought today which I found a plastic bag big enough to put it in to make it easier for me to carry.  I just hope my big pack isn’t over weight.  Americans are so conscious of the luggage weight and hit you up even if you are 2kg over.  They are the worst for this and I hate it as I have never really had to worry knowing that my bag can only hold around 24kg. 

Goodnight from somewhere in Chicago as I head to Minneapolis tomorrow and my third last stop of my World Odyssey.  Thank-you to Cheryl, Joe and David for having me in their homes, enjoying a staycation for them in their own city and for being great friends.  You guys are a classic example of friends that I have met on vacation and that will now be friends for life.  I love you guys and I am so glad that I finally made it to you both, it took a few years, but I made it. xx         

HEAD IN THE CLOUDS AT 103 FLOORS….

WEATHER: Rainy and 15C

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting up Willis Tower even though we saw ZILCH

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Rain rain go away

WORD OF THE DAY: How cold is it????

This was our last full day in the amazing city of Chicago.  I still had tomorrow, but we were heading out to the burbs for most part of the day and as all luck has to end at some stage our track of good weather came to an end today with rain when we woke up this morning.  This was okay as most of the things we were doing today were indoors, but the only downer is that we may not get to see much from the Willis Tower, but we will just wait and see if the weather has set in or will hopefully just pass us by. 

After our vacation day yesterday we woke surprisingly groggy and lethargic.  We have had a busy week I must say and with the weather so hot the last few days it just zaps your energy.  But we had some exciting things on the boil, so after a few scones for breakfast washed down with some tomato juice we were back on the ‘L’ for the 15 minute ride to the Willis Tower.  The Willis tower was the old Sears Tower and United have just moved all the operations departments into the building last week and with a very handy ‘high’ contact in HQ Cheryl was able to get us a walk through the new offices at 12 noon.  Willis Tower (formerly named Sears Tower) is a 108-story, 1,451-foot (442 m) skyscraper in Chicago.  At the time of its completion in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years. The Willis Tower is the tallest building in the United States and the eighth -tallest freestanding structure in the world. The skyscraper is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Chicago.  Although Sears' naming rights expired in 2003, the building continued to be called the Sears Tower for several years. In March 2009, London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings agreed to lease a portion of the building, and obtained the building's naming rights. On July 16, 2009, the building was officially renamed the Willis Tower.  We were 10 minutes early for our appointment so we waited inside to get out of the rain.  It was busy inside being lunch hour.  People were coming and going, people with lunches in their hands, people in groups heading out to lunch, people umbrellas coming in out of the rain, cleaners trying to clean up the water that people were bringing in on their umbrellas and they have ushers to direct people when they enter the building.  Of course I wanted to take a photo and I got into trouble with security being quite tight for one of the most important buildings in Chicago if not all of the Unites States.  Our names were on a list where we had to check in and get a visitors pass for access to the ‘inner sanctum’.  David, Kent, Cheryl and I were met by the Managing Director of United Airlines a little after 12 noon for our personal tour of the 26^th floor.  To get to the applicable lifts to get us to the floor, we had to pass through an airport security scanner, our bags had to be scanned and then our pass had to be scanned to be able to pass through the automatic gates.  These dudes do take their security seriously and with good reason I suppose. 

I knew heading into the areas that we were going that taking was off limits so I didn’t even bother to ask.  I was just thankful I had the opportunity to go up and see the whole operation.  United moved into the building last week occupying around 12 floors throughout the 120 story building with around 3000 staff now located in Willis Tower.  Continental and United merged in October last year making United now the largest airline in the world with the Continental team having moved into their new home yesterday, so it all literally was brand new for everyone.  United Continental Airlines moved its corporate headquarters and top executives down Wacker Drive from the United Building to Willis Tower.  In space United is the building's largest tenant, occupying about 780,000 square feet or 22 percent of the building, up from about 18 percent currently. After the move to Willis Tower is complete, United expects to employ more than 13,000 people in Chicago.  It projects that the rest of the moves will happen over the next 18 months. Eventually, Continental's operations center in Houston will close, with those functions moved to Willis Tower. The combined airline will be run from United's current headquarters in Chicago.  United and Continental are now both units of United Continental Holdings Inc., which will continue to run the airlines separately while it combines their operations.

We were in the operations center for just under an hour and with a BIG thank you and a handshake we were taken down in the ‘security’ lift shown some secret passage (not really) to the east entrance of the building and shown to the lift that would take us to the entrance of the Willis Tower Skydeck on the 103^rd floor.   The weather outside if anything had deteriorated and it was raining quite heavily and was very cloudy.  When we bought our tickets the ticket guy said that there was a 1mile visibility which we were fine with.  I would prefer to see something and say I had been in once the tallest building in the world till a few years ago rather than not at all, even if we couldn’t see much. 

The Skydeck experience is all new from the ground up. Discover the best of Chicago as you make your way up to the 103rd floor.  Things on the lower level before getting to the lift include interactive Chicago trivia games; explore Chicago with interactive touch screen activities and exhibits, the Skydeck Theater Experience “Reaching for the Sky”, a fascinating 9-minute movie telling the story of Chicago’s rise to the top of the architectural world. Learn how the tower went from dream to world icon.  Compare heights with the tallest structures in the world and see just how many of you it would take to measure up to the height of Willis Tower.  It was a pretty good interactive center before getting to the lift to take us up to the 103^rd floor at 488m per minute.  The tower is a world-renowned building, a Chicago icon. The eighth-tallest building in the world, it remains the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, standing 1,450 feet and 110 stories tall.

There were so many people up here when we got to the top and most of them school children.  The first opportunity we got to see the view out of the windows was not what we had expected which was white.  Not a single thing could be seen left, right or center.  It was like the whole building was wrapped in a big massive fluffy cloud.  When we asked one of the staff about the 1 mile visibility she said that the clouds had just blown in and to give it 15-20 minutes.  There is a lot of information on the interior walls of Chicago which are interactive and educational attractions that highlight the iconic building and celebrate Chicago’s sports, architecture, pop culture, history, food, music and people and the famous landmarks that can be seen, well on a good day, from the tower so it was easy to blow some time reading the information boards.  The other draw card for the Skydeck was the introduction of The Ledge.  The Ledge transforms how visitors experience Chicago. At 1,353 feet up, The Ledge’s glass boxes extend out 4.3 feet from the skyscraper’s Skydeck on the 103rd floor, providing never-before-seen views of the city.  The Ledge brings an exhilarating new experience to the tower. Opened in 1974, the Skydeck attracts more than 1.3 million visitors annually who enjoy views of up to 50 miles and four states (not today). The inspiration for The Ledge came from hundreds of forehead prints visitors left behind on Skydeck windows every week. From the memorable scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to curious children going right up to the window, visitors are constantly trying to catch a glimpse below. Now they have a unique and unobstructed view of the city.  The Ledge was designed so that the fully enclosed glass boxes retract into the building, allowing easy access for cleaning and maintenance.  Each box is comprised of three layers of half-inch thick glass laminated into one seamless unit. The low-iron, clear glass is fully tempered for durability.  It was hard to begin with to even get onto one of the 4 boxes as they were filled with school children, but as quick as they had arrived they disappeared and then we pretty much had the whole section to ourselves.  No wonder with the view still at ZERO visibility it wasn’t much of a surprise.  We waited with baited breath for another 15 minutes, and we did get some cool photos of us on The Ledge, even if you could see ZILCH of the view and we even for some professional photos taken at my insistence, I know shocking right, and they turned out like we were standing in clouds and I knew I was definitely going to buy them when we got downstairs.  I even got myself doing a Bernstar jump in one of the ledges, like an air jump in the air and I am not sure many people would have that claim to fame…..

Some interesting facts about the tower and Skydeck:

Willis Tower is 443 meters high - 520 meters including twin antenna towers.

Willis Tower is the eighth-tallest building in the world; it remains the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, standing 1,450 feet and 110 stories tall.

The Skydeck is 412 meters above the ground.

The combined weight of the building is 222,500 tons - that's 445,000,000 lbs., 201,849,000 kg, or almost 20,000 city buses!

The cost of building Willis Tower was in excess of $150 million.

Willis Tower opened in 1973 and took 2,000 workers 3 years to build. It took the Ancient Egyptians 20 years to build the pyramids at Giza.

The building has 4.5 million gross square feet (418,064 gross square meters) of floor space; or roughly 101 football fields.

On a clear day, you can see four states - Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Visibility from the Skydeck is approximately 40-50 miles (65 - 80 kilometers).

The average sway of the building is approximately 6 inches (152 millimeters) from true center, but the building is designed to sway up to 3 feet.

Willis Tower has approximately 16,100 bronze-tinted windows.

6 roof-mounted robotic window washing machines clean all 16,100 windows.

Willis Tower elevators operate as fast as 488 meters per minute - among the fastest in the world.

Willis Tower contains 40,223 kilometers of electrical cable.

Approximately 69,200 kilometers of telephone cable runs through the building - enough to stretch across the continental United States 15 times!

Willis Tower was designed for more than 12,000 occupants.

Approximately 25,000 people enter the building each day.

Approximately 1.3 million tourists visit the Skydeck each year.         

The Ledge’s glass boxes extend out 4.3 feet from the skyscraper’s Skydeck on the 103rd floor. Each box weights 7,500 lbs.

The Ledge’s glass boxes are comprised of three layers of half-inch thick glass laminated into one seamless unit. 

The Ledge’s boxes have a thin film over the top layer of glass that assures a clear view 1,353 feet straight down!

The Ledge’s glass boxes are designed to retract into the building, allowing easy access for cleaning and maintenance.

The Ledge is built to withstand four tons of pressure and can hold 10,000 lbs.!

The Ledge has what is called "heat tracing" to melt snow off the glass.

By this time we were famished and accepted the fact that the clouds were in to stay so we descended the 103 floors, jumped into a taxi (it was still raining) and headed for lunch at Smith and Wollensky.  I felt like a steak of some sort and this was the place that was suggested as it was also by the river, but once we got there the bad weather sort of cancelled out the view, but we were inside and starving. 

Smith & Wollensky is the name of several high-end American steakhouses, with locations in New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Columbus, Las Vegas, Miami, Chicago, Boston and Washington D.C.. The first Smith and Wollensky steakhouse was founded in 1977 by Alan Stillman, best-known for creating T.G.I. Friday's, and Ben Benson.  They are the only national steakhouse to dry-age and butcher on site, fly in lobster daily and make their sides and pastries by hand.  So it was a pretty fancy place and the steak on the menu started at 35USD up to 50USD.  I felt like steak and if it was dinner, would have been reasonably happy to pay those prices but for lunch it was a little exuberant, even for me.  We were told the specials of the day, which included a steak sandwich with mushrooms on it (ughhhhh) along with other meals.  So not wanting to pay 35 bucks for a steak I compromised and ordered the 20USD steak off the menu, not the special, and when the steak sandwich came out it looked amazing!!!  I got bacon and cheese added to it and it came with a side of onion rings that had been tempura rather than deep fried and it was the best meal I have had for a long time.  The steak was divine and was cooked perfectly.  With the money I saved on the steak I splurged on a drink and got a French Martini to wash it all down with.  After we had all finished the bill come out and my steak sandwich was actually 35USD.  Well this was a surprise as we looked back at the menu and it definitely said 20USD, so we called the waiter over and asked him what the go was and he thought I wanted the special of the say sandwich and not the menu sandwich, so it was a little bit of a mix up and he went and saw the manager and said that they will honor the menu price and I did get it for 20 bucks.  I felt a little bad and was going to pay the 35USD as the steak was that good, but it all ended well but I can highly recommend Smith and Wollensky if you feel like a steak as it is defiantly worth the money spent. 

We said our goodbye’s to Kent here.  We had a very important event to attend this evening out in the ‘burb’s.  It was David’s nephew Grant’s speech he was giving at the school to welcome the new kids and parents to Middleschool for the start of the next school year in August.  Grant had checked a few times over the last few days telling Uncle David to not be late as he was first.  So for such an important event, we decided to head straight to David’s apartment catching the L, getting a tour of his home and then getting straight into the car for the hour’s drive (traffic dependent) to get to the school on time.  It is funny that now I am making Ethiopia my home just how much things I see relating to my new country.  David has Ethiopian parking attendants working in his building.  He calls them when he needs his car and by the time he gets to the garage they have pulled out his car for him ready to drive straight out of the garage.  There were 2 attendants there when we picked up the car, one was from Bahir Dar (been there) and the other was from Addis.  Small world huh, so I said hello in Amharic to them and told then the few words I could remember from my last trip and they looked tickled pink.  They wished me the best of luck when I told them that I was moving and we drove out.  We passed 4 Ethiopian restaurants on our way out of town and also an Ethiopian supermarket.  Who would have thought?  David said there is a lot of Ethiopians living in Washington DC which surprised me as well.  It is cool though and it makes me proud to be associated with this country. 

We drove our way through some pretty amazing suburbs of Chicago including Evanston, Wilmette, Kenilworth and Glencoe.  These suburbs are some of the most prestigious in Chicago if not the country and the size of the houses, no mansions, certainly had some WOW factors as we passed them.  Some of them were mega homes and hard to picture people living in them, they were homes you see in fancy house magazines.  As David said it was a shame it wasn’t better weather as I would have loved to have taken photos of some of them.  They were stunning. 

WE arrived at the school early, which is better than later, and sat in the entrance till the theater opened for the families to head in.  It was like stepping back 20 years to my school days but wonder if we looked that dorky when we were their age and I don’t think we did.  We couldn’t have right?  But kids were coming and going from basketball practice, band practice etc…. and it was cool to sit and watch the school life pass me by.  I had a great school experience.  I was probably a little more social than academic but I passed everything with B’s and B+’s so this kept everyone happy and I still have school friends as friends today.  We made our way into the gym and got 3^rd row seats and David’s family arrived not long after us.  The speeches started at 7pm and there were seven children up on stage that each spoke on a topic of the new school year for the new students.  These kids are 11 years old and their speeches were amazing.  They were all confident, they got laughs from the couple of hundred people in the auditorium, and they held our attention for the hour they were all on stage.  I was actually flabbergasted at what a great job they had done as there was no way I could have done what they did now, let alone at the age of 11.  We then went out to celebrate at a local Italian Restaurant with David’s parents, brother, Grant, Cheryl and I.  It was great to be included in an extended family for the afternoon; an insight to how an American family works and for them to have me join them was very nice of them.  I got asked questions about my trip and the meal flowed till it was time for us to hit the road.  Another BIG day for us and we were all pooped and Grant still had a day of school left tomorrow. 

So that was my second last night in Chicago.  It is also the last day of May today.  Tomorrow is June and I can now officially say that I am home at the end of the month.  I don’t think it really has sunk in yet the next portion of the trip and adventure ahead of me.  The main countdown has been for me getting home.  Once I am home I can then look forward and really think about the monumental move ahead. 

ANOTHER VACATION DAY-GREAT CHICAGO FIRE AND THE PUMP ROOM

WEATHER: Cooler and 20C

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting 3 blogs uploaded

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing

WORD OF THE DAY:  New friends

After our massive day yesterday and a bit of a sleep in this morning till 9.30am we decided to have another ‘vacation’ day today.  I think we have well and truly earnt it.  There is that awkward moment though when you are happy to have a home day, Cheryl is happy to have a home day but who goes first thinking that the other person maybe disappointed……  Well either way it worked out and by the time we had got around to discussing it, it was already 11am.  The only thing we had planned today was actually dinner tonight at the Pump Room and I am pretty excited about that. 

Not one to totally laze around all day I got out the computer and started to just knuckle down and pump out some blogs.  I was still in Canada and had to at least get my but into the USA today no matter how long it took me.  In the meantime Cheryl cooked another amazing breakfast/brunch and this has been our routine for the last few days.  She loves to cook; I love to eat-what could be better.  So we generally have the one meal ‘brunch’ maybe a snack in the afternoon (with a cocktail) to get us through till dinner time and then we have dinner.  I like this way of living and especially when some-one else is doing the cooking!  While on the computer I also loaded the last few days of photos and it didn’t surprise me when there were more than 300 to do.  I just couldn’t stop taking pictures of all the buildings.  The weather has been perfect to date, the sun out and it just makes for amazing pictures.  What can I say….

I haven’t mentioned at all how Chicago got to how it looks today with all its architecture so thought I would give a little background into it all and it all pretty much started after the Great Chicago Fire.  The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871, killing hundreds and destroying about 9 km² in Chicago.  Though the fire was one of the largest U.S. disasters of the 19th century, the rebuilding that began almost immediately spurred Chicago's development into one of the most populous and economically important American cities.  On the flag of Chicago, the second star commemorates the fire.  Although Mrs. Catherine O'Leary and her cow were publicly blamed for starting the fire for many years, evidence was eventually presented that the story was fabricated for dramatic effect by a journalist, and she was officially exonerated. The exact cause and origin of the fire remain uncertain.  The fire started at about 9 p.m. on Sunday, October 8, in or around a small barn that bordered the alley behind 137 DeKoven Street. The traditional account of the origin of the fire is that it was started by a cow kicking over a lantern in the barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O'Leary. Michael Ahern, the Chicago Republican reporter who created the cow story, admitted in 1893 that he had made it up because he thought it would make colorful copy.  While the barn was certainly the first building to be consumed by the fire, the official report at the time stated, "whether it originated from a spark blown from a chimney on that windy night, or was set on fire by human agency, we are unable to determine".  The fire's spread was aided by the city's overuse of wood for building, a drought prior to the fire, and strong winds from the southwest that carried flying embers toward the heart of the city. The city also made fatal errors by not reacting soon enough and citizens were apparently unconcerned when it began. The firefighters were also tired from fighting a fire that happened the day before.  The firefighters fought the fire through the entire day and became extremely exhausted. Eventually the fire jumped to a nearby neighborhood and began to devastate mansions, houses and apartments. Almost everything that crossed the fire's path was made of wood that had been dried out for quite a while. After two days of burning, rain helped douse the remaining fire. It is said that over 300 people died in the fire and over 100,000 were left homeless.  When the fire engulfed a tall church west of the Chicago River, the flames crossed the south branch of the river. Helping the fire spread was firewood in the closely packed wooden buildings, ships lining the river, the city's elevated wood-plank sidewalks and roads, and the commercial lumber and coal yards along the river. The size of the blaze generated extremely strong winds and heat, which ignited rooftops far ahead of the actual flames.  The attempts to stop the fire were unsuccessful. The mayor had even called surrounding cities for help, but by that point the fire was simply too large to contain. When the fire destroyed the waterworks, just north of the Chicago River, the city's water supply was cut off, and the firefighters were forced to give up.  As the fire raged through the central business district, it destroyed hotels, department stores, Chicago's City Hall, the opera house and theaters, churches and printing plants. The fire continued spreading northward, driving fleeing residents across bridges on the Chicago River. There was mass panic as the blaze jumped the river's main stem and continued burning through homes and mansions on the city's north side. Residents fled into Lincoln Park and to the shores of Lake Michigan, where thousands sought refuge from the flames.  The fire finally burned itself out, aided by diminishing winds and a light drizzle that began falling late on Monday night. From its origin at the O'Leary property, it had burned a path of nearly complete destruction of some 34 blocks to Fullerton Avenue on the north side.

Eventually it was determined that the fire destroyed an area about 6km long and averaging 1 km wide, encompassing more than 2,000 acres. Destroyed were more than 117 km of roads, 190 km of sidewalk, 2,000 lampposts, 17,500 buildings, and $222 million in property—about a third of the city's valuation. Of the 300,000 inhabitants, 90,000 were left homeless. Between two and three million books were destroyed from private library collections. The fire was said by The Chicago Daily Tribune to have been so fierce that it surpassed the damage done by Napoleon's siege of Moscow in 1812. Remarkably, some buildings did survive the fire, such as the then-new Chicago Water Tower, which remains today as an unofficial memorial to the fire's destructive power. It was one of just five public buildings and one ordinary bungalow spared by the flames within the disaster zone. The O'Leary home and Holy Family Church, the Roman Catholic congregation of the O'Leary family, were both saved by shifts in the wind direction that kept them outside the burnt district.  After the fire, 125 bodies were recovered. Final estimates of the fatalities ranged from 200–300, considered a small number for such a large fire. In later years, other disasters would claim many more lives: at least 605 died in the Iroquois Theater Fire in 1903; and, in 1915, 835 died in the sinking of the Eastland excursion boat in the Chicago River. Yet the Great Chicago Fire remains Chicago's most well-known disaster for the magnitude of the destruction and the city's recovery and growth.

In the days and weeks following the fire, monetary donations flowed in to Chicago from around the country and even foreign cities along with donations of food, clothing, and other goods. These donations came from individuals, corporations, and cities. New York City for example gave $450,000 along with clothing and provisions, St. Louis gave $300,000, and the Common Council of London gave 1,000 Gunieas as well as ₤7,000 from private donations.  Chicago emerged from the fire with one of the country's leading fire fighting forces.  Land speculators and business owners quickly set about rebuilding the city. Donations of money, food, clothing and furnishings arrived quickly from across the nation. The first load of lumber for rebuilding was delivered the day the last burning building was extinguished. Only 22 years later, Chicago hosted more than 21 million visitors during the World's Columbian Exposition. Another example of Chicago's rebirth from the Great Fire ashes is the now famed Palmer House hotel. The original building burned to the ground in the fire just 13 days after its grand opening. Without hesitating, Potter Palmer secured a loan and rebuilt the hotel in a lot across the street from the original, proclaiming it to be "The World's First Fireproof Building".  So that is pretty much where Chicago was reborn and what a story.  I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to see a fire of that magnitude to start with but them to see the ruins of a charred city would have been just as devastating. 

So the afternoon rolled on and I got the last blog loaded at 5pm.  Just in time for me to start getting ready for this evening’s dinner at the Pump Room.  It is a swanky little art deco restaurant and we need to bring our A game.  I had a shower, donned on a DRESS, did my makeup and I even borrowed Cheryl’s hair straightener and ironed my hair.  Now ‘that’ is something I haven’t done in a long long time.  I miss my GHD and I know I will definitely appreciate them when I get home.  It was a wonder I remembered how to use them after 14 months.  I felt and hoped I looked like a lady…….  We had cocktail hour while we waited for David to arrive at 6.30pm and then we headed at 7.30pm for out reservation we had at 8pm. 

We were a party of 4 tonight, meeting Nora at the restaurant for 7.45pm.  We had a quick walk around of the lobby of the groovy hotel before checking in and being asked to wait as our table was just being cleared.  There was a funky vibe to the place, it was busy and to me felt like the place to be seen.  I think we were definitely going to have a good meal tonight. 

The Pump Room, established October 1, 1938, by Ernie Byfield, is a restaurant located in the Public Chicago Hotel, formerly The Ambassador East, in Chicago's Gold Coast area.  The restaurant served a number of celebrities who were regular customers and has been written about in books and articles.  Arturo Petterino (1920–2010) was its maitre d' for many years, steering celebrity patrons to the coveted Booth One. Famous guests included Frank Sinatra, John Barrymore, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, David Bowie, Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Ronald Reagan, Paul Harvey, Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Sammy Davis Jr.,Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor, Lena Horne, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn, Liza Minnelli, Robert Redford, Bill Murray, Josephine Baker, Phil Collins, Gertrude Lawrence, Eddie Fisher, Michael J. Fox, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner, Mel Brooks, Olivia Newton-John, Peggy Lee, Mick Jagger and many others.  In April 2010, the Ambassador East Hotel was sold to Ian Schrager Co.  It closed in 2011 and was completely remodeled as the Public Chicago Hotel. The Pump Room reopened in fall 2011, with food concepts by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.  The good thing eating with friends is that you get to try each other’s meals once they come out.  For appetizers I got a carrot and avocado salad with sesame seeds, sprouts and a dip of sour cream, Nora had fois grais, Cheryl had the pea soup and David had some green vegetable salad.  After tasting Cheryl’s pea soup I think it was the best soup I have ever had.  Entrée (main meal) consisted for me of California lamb chops with salad and fries, Lemon fish for Cheryl, chicken for Nora and David had the (um I can’t remember….) but my chops were just divine and the fries were just delicious.  Amazing how something so simple could be made to yummy.  I even managed to fit in dessert having a warm chocolate mud cake with vanilla bean ice cream and the ladies shared a rhubarb pie and ice-cream.  The service was amazing.  We had a server, then a plate clearer (cute and Nora and David were trying to guess who’s people he was) and when the meals come out they were all served at the same time by 2 more people.  It was like we were getting buzzed each time in a flurry of waiters and plates and it felt kind of cool to have that attention, if even for a few seconds.    

On our way out, downstairs they have old black and white photos of all the famous people that had eaten here before it was closed and then rebirthed again.  There were some very young pictures of Rob Lowe, Eddie Murphy, Mick Jagger and Michael J Fox to name a few and then the golden oldies of Carey Grant, Fred Astaire and Paul Newman.  Why they don’t show case these photos upstairs and down near the toilets is beyond me, but there must have been over 300 photos there and we took the time to look them all over.  There is a piece of history tight there sitting on those 3 walls.  It was pretty cool to see.

So that was our ‘vacation’ day and a perfect way to end the day.  We also didn’t feel guilty about not doing much today as we have a big day in the city tomorrow visiting the NOC of United and getting up the Willis Tower (Sears Tower) to name a few things.