CHICAGO VIEWED FROM THE WATER AND THE SKY

WEATHER: Glorious-what a show Chicago has put on for me 30C

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 3^rd 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 95^th 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!!!!!!

VACATION DAY AND A NEW PHONE

WEATHER: Hot and 28C

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting a new phone

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a negative

WORD OF THE DAY:  New phone

After a massive day yesterday and today being a public holiday here for Memorial Day we were going to lie low.  That is just what you do on public holidays combined with vacation time.  I have been setting my alarm for 9am and I am happy/sad to report that i5t going off at9am is what is getting me out of bed.  My body clock is starting to get later and later.  But in my defence the clock was wound back an hour from Canada to Chicago, so really I am getting up 30 minutes before.  Yeah, that’s right!  I am staying in the guest/office room and with the air conditioning on the blinds drawn over the window and the comfiest doona and pillow, I rekon I could easily sleep there all day.

My blog was starting to get away from me.  The last few days have been so busy and then we aren’t getting to bed till 11.30pm, I am just too tired to even contemplate trying to put words onto paper.  But today I have made a deal with myself that I have to load at least 2 pages and get myself out of Canada and at least into the USA.  I’m currently still on my day tour in Quebec City. 

Cheryl and Joe had some errands to get done so after breakfast I made myself at home on the couch, computer fired up and the TV House Hunters International on the box, I sat there all day and pimped out 3 blogs.  It does take me about an hour to 1.5 hours to complete 1 entry depending on how much we had done that day as to how much information I need to source/Wikipedia.  It is a big job but with over 33, 200 people having clicked on my site, it is enough incentive for me to keep on keeping on.  I also know I will be thankful I have kept such a detailed account and that makes me a little proud as I pat myself on the back.

I also did some homework on mobile phones as I NEED to have one.  I don’t use it for calling as such but I do rely on it for texting.  I want another Blackberry.  I love the qwerty keyboard and the phones in general and there is a new one out the Blackberry Torch that has the keyboard and is also touch screen.  That is the one that I want.  I looked at prices and they are all around the 600USD to buy the phone out right and then we are not 100% sure that I can unlock the network when I get home, which would then render the 600USD phone useless.  So I have decided to buy a cheaper phone to get me through the last 4 weeks and looking at prices online at home, the Blackberry Torch is around the 350AUD mark which is a hell of a lot better than 600USD.  So when Cheryl got back we jumped in the car and drove to Best Buys, which is like a Harvey Norman back home, to get me a new phone.  I had a budget of 100-150USD in mind and when we finally got served they showed me a wall of phones that I could buy on a pre-paid account.  It is quite an ordeal to get international roaming on the phones and no prices are given for any of the carriers on the cost of international anything, as it is just not a thing many Americans get into.  So after some deliberation and recommendations from the phone guy, I purchased a 45USD phone which is locked to the AT&T network and I purchased a 50USD preplan for the month.  It gives me free calls and text messages in the US and I can go online or call the carrier to get international capabilities added to the plan.  So I got a way cheaper phone than planned, it has a qwerty keyboard and I am a happy camper back in textland.  Now I just need to add on the international bit and then give it a test run to Australia and Ethiopia. 

We headed out to dinner at 5pm.  The guys are so keen to show me as much of Chicago as they can in the week that I am here, which also includes the food of the city.  Next on our hit list was a Burger.  Chicago is known for its burgers and in the last few years there has been a revival of Burger restaurants opening.  We decided to try one of the newer ones that opened called The Burger Bar and these things were massive.  That was all there was on the menu, and you could add or take off as much as you wanted.  I don’t know what had gotten into me but I had the triple pork and it was amazing.  Knock that down with a vanilla milkshake that came with 4 cookies in the cream and then a disgusting cocktail that I couldn’t finish we were now fed and watered ready for the Comedy Club, where we were going tonight.  It isn’t any normal comedy club, it is a famous Chicago Entity known as Second City.  We did have some time to kill, so the gang showed me the neighborhood where the club was, called Old Town. 

Old Town includes the Old Town Triangle Historic District. This historic district is now an affluent gentrified neighborhood home to many of Chicago's older, Victorian-era buildings. In the 1950s, the majority of this area was an enclave to the first Puerto Ricans to immigrate to Chicago. They referred to this area as part of "La Clark" until commercialization decorated late 1960s shop signs with the name of Old Town. The neighborhood is home to St. Michael's Church, originally a Bavarian-built church, and one of 7 to survive the path of the Great Chicago Fire. The neighborhood is also home to the famed The Second City improvisational comedy troupe. Many of the streets and alleys, particularly in the Old Town Triangle section, predate the Great Chicago Fire and do not all adhere to a typical Chicago grid pattern. Through the 1930s, an art colony emerged in the neighborhood as artists moved from the Towertown neighborhood near Washington Square Park.  Old Town was also home to many gays & lesbians from the 1920s through the 1980s. There were numerous gay bars lining Wells Street (all of them closed now). This was the first "gay ghetto" in Chicago, predating the current Lake View neighborhood (which is the current epicenter of gay life); the first homophile organization in American history, the Society for Human Rights, was established by Henry Gerber at his home on North Crilly Court in 1924. As the area gentrified, the gays moved further north to Lincoln Park and then Lake View neighborhoods. 

After the Martin Luther King assassination, and the subsequent riots, the neighborhood experienced a tense racial division during the 1970s and 1980s which left a de facto segregation between Old Town north of North Ave. and Old Town south of North Ave. In the early 2000s this trend has begun to shift towards a gentrification of the area.   Currently, Old Town south of North Avenue is a mixture of rich and poor though is steadily gentrifying.  The continued demolition of the Cabrini–Green housing projects to the south has led to significant demographic changes in the neighborhood.  It was cool to walk around the ‘hood’ and see the bars and restaurants full of people enjoying the long week-end and I feel sorry for the suckers that have to go back to work tomorrow!!! SUCKERS. 

We walked back to Second City to find our seats and settle in for what would be nearly a 3 hour show. 

The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.  The Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City has produced television programs in both the United States and Canada.  Since its debut, the Second City has consistently been a starting point for comedians, award winning actors, directors, and others in show business.  The Second City was the first on-going improvisational theater troupe in the United States. It evolved from the Compass Players, a 1950s cabaret revue show started by undergraduates at the University of Chicago. The troupe chose the self-mocking name from the title of an article about Chicago by A. J. Liebling that appeared in The New Yorker in 1952.  The cabaret theater, comedy style of the Second City tended towards satire and commentary of current social norms and political figures and events. In 1961, the theater sent a cast to Broadway with the musical revue, From the Second City, directed by Sills and earning a Tony nomination for ensemble member Severn Darden.^[5] Eventually, the theater expanded to include three touring companies and a second resident company, and now fosters a company devoted to outreach & diversity. The style of comedy has changed with time, but the format has remained constant. Second City revues feature a mix of semi-improvised and scripted scenes with new material developed during unscripted improv sessions after the second act, where scenes are created based on audience suggestions. Another Second City innovation is the inclusion of live, improvised music during the performance.

Some Alumni that made there starts from Second City include: 1964-David Steinberg, 1971-John Belushi, 1973-John Candy, Bill Murray, 1974-Dan Aykroyd, 1976-Shelley Long, 1978-James Belushi, 1988-Mike Myers, 1989-Chris Farley, 1991-Steve Carell to name a few.  We only paid 25 bucks for our tickets and even though we were seated in the last row of the whole room, we had a great unobstructed view of the stage and we didn’t want to be close to the stage anyway in case they get participants up from the crowd.  No thanks and they did just that and the improv  for that was hilarious.  The show was pretty funny.  I think with improv there can be good nights and bad nights and this was a good night.  I understood most skits that were on, there was just one about past presidents that I really didn’t know what was happening, but otherwise I had a good laugh all night.  I am not sure if it is an Australian thing, but we really don’t find David Letterman funny, so I was unsure what the funnies would be like tonight, so I was pleasantly surprised by the show and its contents.  There was an intermission after an hour and then they came out to do another hour.  After they said their thanks and farewell they came back out after another short intermission and gave us another 40 minutes of material that they were still working on, so some of the skits they were holding notes.  They had wait staff going around all evening taking drink orders and you could also order food from them as well and our bill was given to us in the last half of the second session.  Leaving Second City just after 11pm, we all left with smiles on our faces and if you are in town then I do recommend you drop in and see a show. 

Back home, and a goodbye to David, he was attending a funeral of a family friend, so we wouldn’t be seeing him till Wednesday I then was on a mission to work out the international package for my phone on line.  AT&T’s web site like any other phone carrier is all over the place and it took me forever to find, sign up, login and add the package to my plan.  It was 10USD and I am not really sure what I get for that, but I sent Shelly a text message and she replied straight back so hallelujah it works and welcome back to the land of mobiles.  Also the funny thing is I now have a Chicago number and it is a city prefix of 312 which not even Cheryl has for her number.  I am in the ‘groove’ with a 312 number.  Oh now I really am getting into the Chicago swing of things!!!  Light was off at 1am and time to get some shut eye after a day of not doing too much at all and it was great!!! 

HOTTEST DAY IN MAY AND THE BEAN

WEATHER: HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT 33C

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the BEAN!!!!!!!!

BUMMER OF THE DAY: May it was a little too hot?

WORD OF THE DAY:  BEAN!!!!

I was up early this morning at 8am, before anyone else was up.  It is always a little awkward the first night/day in some-ones house as you don’t want to wake anyone, you don’t know their routine and I just want to be the best house guest I can be.  People open their homes to me and I know how lucky I am and not to mention the money I am saving by not having to pay for accommodation for the week is priceless.  So I had a shower in the upstairs bathroom and then sat on the couch and fired up the computer till the rest of the house surfaced.  I did try and turn on the 108cm TV but with 4 remotes staring at me and after hitting the on button on 3 of them I decided to just listen to some music instead.  I then decided to download some Top 40 songs, it has been a while since I have updated my music library, so I always jump onto Top 40 Australia and then get the songs and artists from there.  So I now have 32 new songs ready to go.  It was a productive morning and I also started the very big blog entry of the Day in Quebec, I have been skirting that entry for the last few days and I just need to knuckle down and get it written.  So this was also started.

We were meeting David and a friend Kent for brunch today in the city and then we were going to see some of downtown on foot.  When some-one mentions Chicago I always think of The Bean aka Cloud Gate, so I was really looking forward to seeing this, to me this was part of Chicago.  Whether this is right I’m not sure but besides all the architecture this is what I pictured.  It was a Sunday of a public holiday so as we got into the heart of the city there were people everywhere.  It was busy.  They were all out making the most of all the sun shine and the glorious day that it was.  We parked in a ‘garage’ and made our way to ‘The Gage’.  It was located on Michigan Avenue and was across the road from one of the major parks of the city, Millennium Park.  I’m not sure if I have mentioned but my friends work for the airline United, which is a domestic and international American owned airline.  Without divulging too much there is a lot of things that happen behind the scenes that we don’t see and what they have to put up with is just amazing.  I think they deserve medals when you hear some of the passenger stories.  So there was a lot of airline talk around the table, which is always interesting, thrown in with some of my travel antidotes and before we knew it 2.5 hours had passed!  I remember checking my Blackberry while I was sitting at the table and then putting it back, what I thought, in my bag.  More on that to come.

So after we finished lunch we made our way down Michigan Avenue towards Millennium Park when we came across the Chicago Architecture Foundation store.  This is where the Architecture tours can be booked and they also have shop that has all sorts of products you can buy that are on the funky side like kitchen wares, books, information on the city etc.  It really is a cool shop and then if you go through the shop into the internal of the building there is a massive model, massive.  It is called Chicago Model City is the only accurate and up-to-date three-dimensional portrait of Chicago's downtown. This 320-square-foot work-in-progress enables you to see Chicago as you've never seen it before. The model became an instant icon when it opened in 2009, beloved by tourists and locals alike. It has become the centerpiece for exhibitions in the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s atrium gallery. 

We then continued on our own ‘Cheryl, David and Joe’ tourist walk.  Our next stop was the beautiful Buckingham Fountain.  Buckingham Fountain is a Chicago landmark in the center of Grant Park. Dedicated in 1927, it is one of the largest fountains in the world. Built in a rococo wedding cake style and inspired by the Latona Fountain at the Palace of Versailles, it is meant to allegorically represent Lake Michigan. It operates from April to October, with regular water shows and evening color-light shows. During the winter, the fountain is decorated with festival lights.  The fountain is considered Chicago's front door, since it resides in Grant Park, the city's front yard.  The fountain itself represents Lake Michigan, with each sea horse symbolizing the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, that border the lake. The fountain was donated to the city by Kate Buckingham in memory of her brother, Clarence Buckingham and was constructed at a cost of $750,000. The fountain's official name is the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain.   The fountain operates daily 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. from mid-April through mid-October. Water shows occur every hour on-the-hour and last 20 minutes. During shows, the center jet shoots up vertically to 46 m and after dusk, shows are choreographed with lights and music. The last show begins at 10:00 p.m. nightly.  The fountain is constructed of Georgia pink marble and contains 5,700,000 L of water. During a display, more than 14,000 U.S. gallons per minute (0.88 m3/s) are pushed through its 193 jets. The fountain's pumps are controlled by a Honeywell computer which was previously located in Atlanta, Georgia until the 1994 renovation when it was moved to a Chicago suburb.  In 1994, the fountain received a $2.8 million restoration to its three smallest basins which developed leaks due to Chicago's harsh winters.  Buckingham Fountain was the eastern terminus of U.S. Route 66.  The Fountain was also prominently featured in the title sequence to the television show Married...with Children.  The Fountain was the starting point for the television show The Amazing Race 6 in 2004.  In September 2010, three people were arrested for swimming in the fountain and charged with reckless conduct.  

We then continued our walk down on the water front of Lake Michigan.  Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. The other four Great Lakes are shared by the US and Canada. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron (and is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of West Virginia).  It is bounded, from west to east, by the U.S. states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.  It has a surface area of 58,000 km2 making it the largest lake entirely within one country by surface area (Lake Baikal, in Russia, is larger by water volume), and the fifth largest lake in the world. It is 494 km long by 190 km wide with a shoreline 2,640 km long. The lake's average depth is 85 m, while its greatest depth is 281 m. It contains a volume of 4,918 km³ of water. Twelve million people live along Lake Michigan's shores, mainly in the Chicago and Milwaukee metropolitan areas.   It was beautiful with the sail boats all bobbing in the harbor and marina and with the sun beating on the water, it looked so blue. 

We crossed over the famous ‘snake bridge’.  Officially known as The BP Pedestrian Bridge, or simply BP Bridge, is a girder footbridge.  It spans Columbus Drive to connect Daley Bicentennial Plaza with Millennium Park, both parts of the larger Grant Park. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, it opened along with the rest of Millennium Park on July 16, 2004. Gehry had been courted by the city to design the bridge and the neighboring Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and eventually agreed to do so after the Pritzker family funded the Pavilion.  Named for energy firm BP, which donated $5 million toward its construction, it is the first Gehry-designed bridge to have been completed.  BP Bridge is described as snakelike because of its curving form.  The pedestrian bridge serves as a noise barrier for traffic sounds from Columbus Drive. It is a connecting link between Millennium Park and destinations to the east, such as the nearby lakefront, other parts of Grant Park and a parking garage.  BP Bridge uses a concealed box girder design with a concrete base, and its deck is covered by hardwood floor boards.  It is designed without handrails, using stainless steel parapets instead. The total length is 285 m, with a five percent slope on its inclined surfaces that makes it barrier free and accessible. Although the bridge is closed in winter because ice cannot be safely removed from its wooden walkway, it has received favorable reviews for its design and aesthetics.  It was designed to be a berm noise barrier blocking noise on the eight-lane Columbus Drive from the Park's outdoor band shell (Jay Pritzker Pavilion), by deflecting traffic sounds upward.  The bridge, which uses steel girders, reinforced concrete abutments and deck slabs, hardwood deck, and a stainless steel veneer, cost between $12.1 and $14.5 million. As it was made if stainless steel the heat of the day reflecting off that sucker as we walked through was INTENSE.  As David said you could have cooked an egg on that thing.  It really was scorching hot.  So with no diddle dawdling we hooked it over the bridge to find ourselves at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.  It is a band shell in Millennium Park.  The pavilion was named after Jay Pritzker, whose family is known for owning the Hyatt Hotels. The building was designed by architect Frank Gehry, who accepted the design commission in April 1999; the pavilion was constructed between June 1999 and July 2004, opening officially on July 16, 2004.  Pritzker Pavilion serves as the centerpiece for Millennium Park and is the new home of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Grant Park Music Festival, the nation's only remaining free outdoor classical music series. It also hosts a wide range of music series and annual performing arts events. All rehearsals at the pavilion are open to the public.  The pavilion, which has a capacity of 11,000, is Grant Park's small event outdoor performing arts venue.  The construction of the pavilion created a legal controversy, given that there are historic limitations on the height of buildings in Grant Park. To avoid these legal restrictions, the city classifies the band shell as a work of art rather than a building.  The Pritzker family had donated $15 million to fund Gehry's band shell and an additional nine donors committed a total of $10 million.  The Jay Pritzker Pavilion cost $60 million, a quarter of which came from the Pritzker family donation.  It includes 4,000 fixed seats and a 95,000-square-foot (8,800 m²) Great Lawn that can accommodate an additional 7,000 people.  We were lucky enough to hear the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus practicing for a concert next week-end and to hear the full orchestra playing was amazing.  It was that hot that people were sitting and standing in the shade of the large overhead steel beams, it really was a hot day, and like Montreal and London people were out making the most of the sunny day. 

Only 5 minute walk and not far from Jay Pritzker Pavilion was ‘The BEAN’!!!!!!!!  This was what I was looking forward to all day and it was pretty cool.  Officially known as Cloud Gate, it is a public sculpture and the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park.  Constructed between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture is nicknamed "The Bean" because of its bean-like shape. Made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It is 10m by 20m by 13m and weighs 100t tons.  Said to have been inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate's 3.7m high arch. On the underside is the "omphalos" (Greek for "navel"), a concave chamber that warps and multiplies reflections. It is popular with tourists as a photo-taking opportunity for its unique reflective properties.  The mirror-like surface would reflect the Chicago skyline, but its elliptical shape would distort and twist the reflected image. As visitors walk around the structure, its surface acts like a fun-house mirror as it distorts their reflections.   The concave underside allows you to walk underneath to see the omphalos, and through its arch to the other side so that they view the entire structure.  Some of the main concerns for the BEAN included being outside, concerns arose that it might retain and conduct heat in a way that would make it too hot to touch during the summer and so cold that one's tongue might stick to it during the winter. The extreme temperature variation between seasons was also feared to weaken the structure. Graffiti, bird droppings and fingerprints were also potential problems, as they would affect the aesthetics of the surface.   Officially named Cloud Gate", three-quarters of the sculpture's external surface reflects the sky and the name refers to it acting as a type of gate that helps bridge the space between the sky and the viewer.  It was busy with people but not too many that you couldn’t get some good photos.  It was cool to stand under The Bean and see the kaleidoscope of a hundreds of me in the reflection. 

Crown Fountain was next and also walking distance from The Bean.  It is an interactive work of public art and video sculpture in Millennium Park.  The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 15.2 m tall, and they use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display digital videos on their inward faces. Construction and design of the Crown Fountain cost $17 million. Weather permitting, the water operates from May to October, intermittently cascading down the two towers and spouting through a nozzle on each tower's front face.  While some of the videos displayed are of scenery, most attention has focused on its video clips of local residents; hundreds of Chicagoans visit the fountain hoping to see themselves appearing on one of the fountain's two screens. The fountain is a public play area and offers people an escape from summer heat, allowing children to frolic in the fountain's water.  In December 1999, Lester Crown and his family agreed to sponsor a water feature in Millennium Park.  Approximately 75 ethnic, social, and religious Chicago organizations were asked to provide candidates whose faces would be photographed for integration into the fountain. The subjects were chosen from local schools, churches and community groups, and filming began in 2001 at the downtown campus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The SAIC students filmed their subjects with a $100,000 high-definition HDW-F900 video camera, the same model used in the production of the three Star Wars prequels.  Each face appears on the sculpture for a total of 5 minutes using various parts of individual 80-second videos.   Of the original 1,051 subjects filmed, 960 videos were determined to be usable for the projects.  Each face is cropped so that no hair and usually no ears are visible. The Crown family, for whom the fountain is named, donated $10 million of the $17 million construction and design cost. The Goodman family, known for funding the Goodman Theatre, was also a large contributor; the entire $17 million cost was provided by private donations.   The fountain's black granite reflecting pool measures 15m by 71m and has an approximate water depth of 6.4 mm.  It displays videos on two LED screens, each encapsulated in a glass brick tower measuring 7.0m by 4.9m. The fountains use over one million LEDs. The inner surface of each tower uses 147 smaller screens with a total of 264,480 LED points.  Needless to say that this was super busy with people frolicking in the water, especially kids and adults walking through with their shoes off.  It was the perfect Oasis in this heat wave. 

That was pretty much is done for the afternoon in the sun anyway.  The heat had really zapped us so we left the park and headed back on one of the busy streets, State Street, and headed into Macy’s that was once an iconic shopping destination known as Marshall Field & Company (Marshall Field’s).  It was a department store in Chicago that grew to become a major chain before being acquired by Macy’s, Inc., on August 30, 2005.  The former flagship Marshall Field and Company Building was officially renamed Macy’s on State Street on September 9, 2006, and is now one of four national Macy’s flagship stores—one of two within the company's Macy’s East retail division, alongside its New York store at Herald Square.  Marshall Field & Company traces its antecedents to a dry goods store opened in 1852 by Potter Palmer.  We had a look around inside, partly to get into some air-conditioning and to get out of the sun and to also show me the internal of the building which was like stepping back in time and getting to the top floor where the eatery was and also views of State Street from the 7^th floor of this historic building.  It was here that I also saw, what I would have to say, the largest country flag I have ever seen.  It dropped from the roof of the 7^th floor all the way to the ground floor.  It was MASSIVE and looked very impressive. 

We briefly stopped at a very large shoe shop called DWS for a quick look and this is where I discovered that I was missing my Blackberry phone.  When I reached into where the pone ‘lives’ and it wasn’t there I just knew that it was gone.  I turned my bag inside out with the hope that I had put it back in the wrong spot, but with all the contents of my bag now on one of the shoe chairs, it was quite clear that I was now Blackberry-less.  It’s the first electronic thing that I have lost all trip and I just knew it was gone.  David rang the restaurant to see if some-one had handed it in, and they did put us on hold for a few minutes while they went to check, but alas it wasn’t there.  I had owned the phone for 15 months, it was a prepaid and I was going to get a new phone when I got home, so it wasn’t such a big drama, I just didn’t get the chance to get all my numbers from it and to me that is the most disconcerting thing to me.   Bummer.  But there is no use being cranky or sad about it.  It’s happened and I just have to let it go and hope that the bastard that now has my phone will enjoy it with all my pictures of Zeme and I and the 30EUR credit I just added on there 3 days ago.  Bastards.

On our way back to the car we had stopped one more time at The Palmer House Hilton is a famous and historic hotel in downtown Chicago.  There have been three Palmer House Hotels at the corner of State and Monroe Streets in Chicago.  The first (known as "The Palmer") was built as a wedding present from Potter Palmer to his bride Bertha Honoré. It opened on September 26, 1871, but burned down just thirteen days later October 9, 1871 in the Great Chicago Fire. Palmer immediately set to work rebuilding, and with a $1.7 million signature loan (believed to be the largest individual loan ever secured at the time) constructed one of the fanciest hotels in post-fire Chicago.  The second Palmer House Hotel was seven stories. Its amenities included oversized rooms, luxurious decor, and sumptuous meals served in grand style. The floor of its barber shop was reputedly tiled with silver dollars. Constructed mainly of iron and brick, the hotel was widely advertised as, "The World's Only Fire Proof Hotel". Famous visitors included presidential hopefuls James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Ulysses S. Grant, William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley; writers Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, and Oscar Wilde; and actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanora Duse.  It was completed in 1875.  By the 1920s, the business in downtown Chicago could support a much larger facility and the Palmer Estate decided to erect a new 25-story hotel.  Between 1923 and 1925, the hotel was rebuilt on the same site — in stages so not a single day of business was lost. At the time it was touted as the largest hotel in the world.  In December 1945, Conrad Hilton bought the Palmer House for $20 million. In 2005 it was sold to Thor Equities, but it remains part of the Hilton chain.  From 2007 to 2009 the hotel, now known as The Palmer House Hilton, was completely renovated and restored, at a cost of over $170 Million. It has a total of 1,639 guest rooms in the hotel, making it the second largest hotel in the city after the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The main salon in the hotel was very old world, but amazing and it was just like stepping back into the 1920’s.  I wonder how much room’s costs to stay here for the night?

We were in the car and about to head home when Cheryl said let’s just stop back by the restaurant and check ourselves that my phone wasn’t there.  I knew it was gone, but to just know that I had checked myself it made sense, so the boys dropped us back onto Michigan Avenue and did a blockie and the gals ran in to double check.  The staff were really good about us double checking them and needless to say that the phone wasn’t there and it was now time to let it go now for 100%.

Dinner was a Chezjuane special of shrimp and vegetable pasta and salad and it was divine!!!  It was a massive, HOT but productive day.  We were all wiped but we all rallied and went for a drive to drop David back home and then we were all tucked up in bed by 11.45pm to get some much needed sleep.  It was the hottest day in May since 1911 and at 10.06pm it was still 28C. 

Welcome to Chicago