Thursday 25th June - Chicago

Another WOW! Chicago ‘is my kinda town’! Even though I was here about fifteen years ago, I am still hugely impressed by this wonderful vibrant city and the size and shapes of the buildings.

After writing yesterday’s blog we decided to go out for a stroll as we read in a brochure that there are firework displays on the lake at 9.30pm on Wednesday evenings. So we wandered across to Grand Park, which is just a very short distance from the hotel towards Lake Michigan, and spent some time there watching the huge Buckingham Fountain which continually changed shape and colour. It was beginning to get dark and all the skyscraper lights were lovely against the dark blue evening sky and the changing colours of the fountain really showed up. Every hour on the hour for 20 minutes the Fountain produces a major water display and the centre jet shoots 150 feet into the air.
The Fountain, one of the largest in the world, is obviously a popular local attaction as just before the hour many people gathered to see this spectacle.

www.cpdit01.com/resources/buckingham_fountain.cfm.

The firework display, although some distance away, was very impressive.

After studying various brochures we decided it would be a good deal to spend $90 on a ‘Go Chicago’ card. This card allows entry into most of the attractions and museums together with unlimited use of a ‘hop on hop off bus‘. But we had to get to Navy Pier

http://www.navypier.com/

to buy it. One day we will learn that what looks like quite a short(ish) walk on a map is, when in America, a very long walk - especially in the heat we have had (again) today. It was actually about one and a half miles but felt like it was much longer.

The first use we made of the card was to take an ‘Architectural River Cruise’ - an hour on the Chicago River going through downtown with a very good commentator pointing out, and giving details of, many of the buildings.

On completion of the river trip and after lunch we got on the (free) bus to go to Hancock’s Tower to take a ride to the Observation Deck on the 94th floor. The lift took only 40 seconds to get there, and the 360 degree views from the big windows were amazing. There was some heat haze around today so perhaps the views were not as clear as they might have been.


By this time we decided we had had enough. The heat and humidity really saps our energy. So we re-boarded the bus (they do continual tours of the city so are fairly frequent) and headed back for a ‘feet-up’ session before going out for another walk this evening.