My Kind of Town.......

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We arrived in Chicago by train three hours late. After more than 50 hours on the train we were ready to walk about on steady ground side by side, rather than single file along the train passage gangway bumping from side to side. We walked out of the train station (Why are all USA train stations called Union Station?) and straight onto a bus heading in the direction of our hotel. But the bus made a detour, and we had to get off near, rather than next to our hotel. Paramount Studios had managed to shut down several streets to film Transformers 3. We had to walk around this gigantic set. People were everywhere, cars were not moving and the rent a cop security tried in vain to get people to keep moving and not take personal photographs. The scene was apocalyptic, burned out and wrecked cars, half a building collapsed and the next day a fire while filming. We walked around and got a bit lost trying to find our hotel. We did eventually and it was right in front of the blocked streets where they were filming. Quite a chaotic arrival, but all good fun really. It set the stage for our entire great Chicago trip.

We started our first full day in Chicago, Sunday, a bit late. We needed a good rest after the long train trip. While on the train we didn't do too much it is still a bit tiring. We walked past the Millennium Park, a gorgeous new green roof top park built on top of the train tracks and parking lot. There is the Cloud Gate (The Bean) and the Frank Gehry designed pavilion for open air concerts. The fountains are a huge hit with the kids who get to splash around in the water to cool off. We walked onto the Art Institute. Everyone is there, Jackson Pollack, Georgia O'Keefe, George Seurat's A Sunday on the Grand Jatte, Van Gogh's bedroom, Grant Wood's American Gothic, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and Monet, Manet, Renoir, Rubens, Carravagio, El Greco. There was a large temporary exhibit of Henri Cartier Bresson - he was a photographer of the 20th Century and took photos from all over the world. We closed the Art Gallery at 5pm, then walked over to the Willis Tower, formally known as the Sears Tower. We waited in a long line to get to the top. 103 floors, the tallest office building in North America and for a while the tallest in the world when it was built in 1974. It was packed and very loud up on the top floor. Kids were running around making more noise than a South African soccer match. There is a very challenging Skywalk to try. A glass floor walk-out. I could barely manage to walk out there, but there were kids running around jumping, lying on their back, and leaning on the glass walls. If it wasn't so hectic, I might have manage more than a toe onto the walk. We watched the sunset over four states from 103 floors up: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Our second full day saw us go to the Science and Industry Museum, on the south side of Chicago, in the meanest part of town, and if you go down there, you just better beware that you have to change buses. The museum has some great stuff. My favorite was Apollo 8, the space capsule that first went around the moon, Christmas Day 1968. I don't have many heroes, but if I were to name any, I'd call astronauts as heroes. Up there in a tin can moving through the vacuum of space doing science and engineering. And in the 1960's their share of politics. Also in the museum is a captured Nazi submarine from WWII. There are many displays of science and engineering including the largest model train display I've ever seen - it took minutes to make one complete circuit. The weather room was fun with plenty of hands on displays. We get to control a 10 meter tall vortex tornado. We closed the museum at 5:30 pm and took a different bus back to downtown that followed the lake.

If you think our days are already long, Tuesday became a marathon. We got up at 5:30 am to photograph Millennium Park. The light from the east really illuminates the park well, and there are no crowds distracted the view. I wanted a photo of The Bean without thousands of reflections and this was only going to happen at 6am. We got to talk to the security man for quite a while as he described the park in all its details, how it was paid for, created and built. It's quite possibly the best urban park I have ever visited. I don't mean to compare it to a more wild park such as Stanley Park or Hyde Park. But as a designed park with sculptures over top train tracks you cannot see or hear this place is remarkable. After this photo excursion we had some breakfast then took the local commute elevated train (The 'L') to Oak Park to see the Frank Lloyd Wright houses. Here about 100 years ago he designed and built 25 houses that people today still live in. I can't imagine the price of one of these houses. We went to the private residence and studio which is now the information centre and gift shop. As a bonus, in the same neighbourhood is the birthplace home of Ernest Hemmingway, now a small museum. Edgar Rice Burroughs also lived in Oak Park. We returned to downtown Chicago to take an afternoon architecture tour by boat. The river goes right through the heart of downtown, the skyscrapers just rise right from the water. The first skyscraper was built in Chicago in the 1870's, a building that required a metal frame. The flow of the river has been redirected since 1900 to go into the Mississippi River by carving a channel south. The river has been upgraded from toxic to highly polluted, so they are making some progress. They are in the process of building a walkway all along the length of both sides of the river - Chicago is trying to go green.

The last day in Chicago Kris and I split up for a few hours. I went to see a dinosaur named Sue at the Field Museum, Kris went shopping. Sue was discovered about 12 years ago in South Dakota, the largest and only complete T-Rex ever discovered. There was a legal battle over who owned the fossils, but eventually with the help of McDonald's the Field Museum bought the T-Rex by auction. As I got to the fossil, a paleontologist was giving a lecture about Sue - I stayed and listened for about 1/2 hour. Very interesting, as this meat eater has both bird like features and reptile features. It was time to leave Chicago, which was a shame, because there is so much to do, and the architecture looks great. It is a great looking city, my kind of town.

We left for the train station near the dinner hour and jumped on our overnight train to Washington DC. We had dinner on the train as we watched industrial Indiana roll by, and drifted off to sleep as we watched Ohio out the window. We woke up somewhere in southern Pennsylvannia. We then followed the Potomac River along the border of Maryland and West Virginia. Lush and green, no wild fires here, it's too hot and humid. It's lucky I was up early for breakfast because later in the morning a hot water pipe burst on the dining car and sprayed scalding hot water everywhere. The kitchen was out for the duration of the trip. We got to Washington DC on time 19 hours after we left Chicago, this seemed quite trivial after the trip from California to Chicago. A terrific rain and thunder and lightning show greeted us in Washington DC. Hot and humid.

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Comments

[Pam]

Thank you for your blog
I am thinking of taking my sons (ages 8 & 11) on a train trip and was looking around for blogs about train travel in the US and found yours. Did you feel safe on the train?