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Published: April 27th 2011
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I caught the train for the 7 hour trip to Chicago, a place that's been on my list of places to visit for years. En-route, the train passed through the suprisingly green Missouri countryside, briefly through Iowa and over the Mississippi river before arriving at Chicago's Union station. I arrived on Easter Sunday and was suprised to find that Americas second city was dead and nearly everything closed. I took the opportunity to kick back for the rest of the day and wait for what hopefully would be a vibrant Monday morning of a new week in Chicago.
After the great fire of 1871 Chicago rebuilt itself and is one of the original skyscraper rich cities. Downtown Chicago is full of art deco, lobbies with fancy trim, terracotta facades and, Chicago is definately the home of revolving doors. Just about every downtown building has them. They can be heavy and build up quite a bit of momentum with all the people going through them, so have to be careful. The Manhattan building on Dearborn street is the oldest skyscraper in the world. It was also the tallest when it was first built, for a week or so. It was completed
in 1891, and is 16 stories tall.
They call Chicago 'the windy city'. Whilst it lives up to its name and is very windy, the reason they call it that, apparently, is because thats what the politicians spoke! I wonder which end it actually came out of, though?! Chicago, however, or Chicagou is Indian for wild onions, which is what was here before the city was established.
I finally got to see some live Blues in a Blues club just two blocks down the road at Buddy Guy's Legends. It was a great atmosphere and the quality of the musicians, just while they were jammin' was excellent, they love their Blues and still managed to step it up a gear when it came to the gig itself. It was open mike night so lots of regulars were giving it a go, some more showy than others.
No trip to the USA would be complete without going to 'a game'. I went to Tuesday nights game between the Chicago Cubs and the Colorado Rockies. As I suspected, really, 'we' lost, 4 - 3. The baseball game itself lasted nearly three hours and was entertaining although it did start
to drag on a bit. It's amazing what a big thing they can make out of a game of rounders :-) A good night, for all. The home of the Chicago Cubs is at Wrigley Field next to Addison station, a short ride on the "L", Chicago's famous eLevated train system. 'The game' was the last big night of my travels.
I have decided to ommit New York because I think I've reached the natural end of my journey and I've been there before. I'm sure it will be there in the future should I want to go again. It means that in the mean time, I will be watching the royal wedding on my own TV...
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