Chicago

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We went down to the Maxwell Street Market on Sunday. It's a great hispanic market that runs every Sunday from 7:00am - 3:00pm at Canal St. and Roosevelt Rd. We had the most amazing tacos made with real fresh corn tortillas! Mmmm... I've never had such delicious tacos. We also had Chicago style deep dish pizza, both at Lou Malnati's Pizzeria (439 N. Wells St.) and Gino's East of Chicago (633 N. Wells St.) Although both places make fantastic pizza, we both agreed that Lou Malnati's was better.

We walked along the waterfront a lot and marvelled at how amazing it is! Chicago really does set an example for how great Toronto could be if we had a good waterfront.

The transit is pretty decent, though awfully loud right downtown where it's elevated above the streets. It's a old system, and we were surprised that the platforms were made of wood! A 3 day pass only costs $12.00.

On Saturday we went to the Art
Picasso Statue
Institute of Chicago, where they had the Cezanne to Picasso exhibit. It was neat to see original paintings by Dali, Henri Matisse, Picasso and others right up close. This museum is huge though, we were there for nearly 3 hours and came nowhere near seeing everything, and we even walked through all the religious stuff really fast. It's crazy how old some of those paintings are though, from the 1500's, but in such good condition.

We saw some pretty good local bands too. Went to the Double Door (1572 North Milwaukee) on Friday night and saw a great Chicago band called AMFM. They were even giving out free demo cd's - these guys know how to promote themselves. Luster, Modena Vox and Raised on Zenith also played that night. Raised on Zenith was pretty kick ass, but we left a few songs into Luster, the final band of the night, cos we just weren't into it. Usually the final band is the best of the night, but I didn't think so. The Double Door is a really neat club. Cans of beer were only $2 (for some wierd reason bottles of the same beer were much more expensive).

Chicago Waterfront
This was taken from up in the Sears Tower. You can see Millennium Park, one of my favourite things about Chicago.
Saturday night we went to The Empty Bottle (1035 North Western) and saw The Zincs, Calla and the Narrator. The Empty Bottle is a great place to see live bands, but there is no seating anywhere in the club so everyone is forced to stand. The biggest difference between Chicago and Toronto bars is that people are still allowed to smoke inside clubs in the U.S., which is really gross when you're a non-smoker used to the smoking ban inside all clubs in Ontario.

We've decided that we are definately going to return to Chicago for the Jazz Festival in 2008. We missed out on seeing all the water fountains on, and Chicago has a lot of really great water fountains, including Buckingham Fountain on the waterfront. When it's on between mid-April and September, it includes light and sound displays. But it was far too cold when we were there for any fountains to be on. I also want to go to the beach in nice weather as Chicago has a really sandy and nice looking beach right on the waterfront not far from downtown.

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Photos

"The Bean"
I wish Toronto had one of these things!

Chicago Skyline
Just one of the many pictures we got of Chicago's magneficient skyline. There's lots of baseball fields in Chicago too.

Wrigley Stadium
The people we were staying with lived right down the street from Wrigley Stadium. On our last day there, it was Opening Day for the Cubs. It was crazy, there were tons of people packed in the bars drinking at 10:00am on Easter Monday morning.

Lincoln Park Zoo
Another thing I love about Chicago is the free zoo they have right on the waterfront! Along with this Lion, we saw penguins, a giraffe, bears, and much more! Free zoos are great. And right down the street, you can get into the Chicago History Museum for free every Monday.

Chicago Waterfront
This was taken from up in the Sears Tower. You can see Millennium Park, one of my favourite things about Chicago.

The Historic Water Tower
This water tower was one of the only buildings left standing after the great Chicago Fire of the late 1800's.

The "EL"
An EL train on the mighty Elevated transit line - The Loop is what it's called downtown where this picture was taken.