Our flight out of LA was delayed, which meant that we didn’t arrive in Chicago until just after midnight. As we were once again staying with couchsurfers who had offered to put us up, we decided to stay in the airport until the morning, so we wouldn’t inconvenience them.
After a fun night in arrivals, we set off on the Metro. Chicago was the first place we had visited with a subway system comparable to what you see in cities like London, Vienna and Berlin – used by a lot of people, and really well connected. We used the Metro all the time when we were in Chicago, going to and from the airport and where we were staying, and it was so easy. The only thing we didn’t attempt was the ‘loop’ in the middle of the city, but I think that that was mainly for commuters, so we didn’t need to try and work out that incredibly confusing section of the Metro!
We only had a couple of days in the city, so we tried to do as much as possible. The main things we did in Chicago are as follows:
Visited Millennium Park
Millennium Park is frankly beautiful. Filled with an insane amount of public art (including the world famous coffee bean), as well as beautiful gardens and buildings designed by the likes of Frank Gehry, it is an art lover’s paradise. It also looks out onto Lake Michigan (which is so massive it looks like the ocean), and you can get the most wonderful view of the city skyline from the park.
I also saw a lot of people running, lounging, and generally appreciating the park, which I really liked. A great example of this is Crown Fountain, an interactive installation by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, which features two giant screens that project images of Chicago residents in extreme close up. When I visited, children were playing in the water, people were watching to see the next face that popped up on screen, and everyone got excited when the fountains started.
Climbed up Willis Tower
Going to the Skydeck was terrifying – as you can see from the picture above, they actually have glass boxes that stick out from the side of the building that you can go and stand in. What freaked me out me most was that there were people doing handstands and jumping up and down in the glass boxes – I had to get Emma to drag me out onto the glass, I was so scared! It’s strange, normally I’m not scared of heights particularly, but there was something about being able to look straight down at the ground over a thousand feet below you that made my knees buckle.
The tower itself was previously known as the Sears Tower, and is still regularly called that colloquially. After its completion in 1973, it held the title of tallest building in the world for 25 years, until it was surpassed by Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. The elevators that take you up to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor travel so fast that my ears popped on the way up )and again on the way back down), so be prepared! However, the view from the top was more than worth the popped ears, and even though it was slightly overcast when we went, you could see for miles (apparently on a clear day you can see right over Lake Michigan into Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan).
Went to the Art Institute of Chicago
I visited the Art Institute after Emma had gone back to Tennessee (she needed to get her stuff before heading home to England – boo), so I could spend time looking at whatever I wanted. At least, that was the theory – I ended up arriving an hour before it closed and so I couldn’t really do more than walk round quickly, getting a look at everything I was interested in. I have to say, what I saw of the Art Institute (a surprising amount for an hour) was absolutely amazing – they had everything from post-impressionism right through to contemporary exhibitions on architecture. I have to say, I focused on the areas of art history that I am particularly interested in (19th century onwards), and I think I could have easily spent an entire day exploring the whole museum.
I also got to see one of my favourite paintings – A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. You might have seen it featured in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, or even in Family Guy (which was actually a parody of Ferris Beuller), and it was definitely the most popular painting I saw in the whole museum. I have seen other work by Seurat, most notably Bathers at Asnieres, which is in the National Gallery in London. I love Seurat’s pointillist style, and it something that you can only fully appreciate when you see the work in person, and you realise that someone made each and every dot by hand, on a painting that is wider than you are tall.
Chicago was such a wonderful city, with a really friendly vibe that made me feel really at home. I really enjoyed how much the city has engaged with public art and public space, and I feel like it all comes together to make a truly welcoming environment. I would go back to Chicago in a heartbeat (and hopefully will someday).
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