My kind of town….Chicago is….my kind of town 🎵 

Ahh, Chicago!  As our uber driver from South Africa put it, “Chicago is a world class city with a reasonable cost of living.  If the weather were warmer, it would be much more expensive.”  Well said!

Chicago is simply marvelous - vibrant and exciting with so many parks and green spaces, cultural offerings, and restaurants wth international cuisines to appeal to the most selective foodies. The city is easily walkable but with many public transportion choices, and SO VERY many beautiful buildings to gaze upon.  It is a feast for the eyes!

Lake Michigan that borders the city is an enormous and extraordinary body of water with lovely beaches, boat rides, and parks.  It’s impossible to get enough of it. Wisely, the city planners maintained a park along the shoreline the entire length of the city which is available to all residents. It’s marvelous!

It’s been over 30 years since I last visited Chicago during a period when I came frequently for business.  I had not realized how much I missed it.  My mother was born and raised in Chicago and we grew up elsewhere in the mid-west.  I wondered as we wandered whether we felt so at home because it’s in the DNA.

We started with a tour on the Chicago River that billed itself as an guided architectural tour - and so it was.   The docent was full of interesing information about the development of the different architectural styles following the Chicago Fire.

The fire represents a seminal moment in Chicago’s building history.   In 1871,  3.3 square miles burned including 17,000 structures and more than 100,000 residents were left homeless.  The Chicago history museum includes an exhibition that provides significant detail about the fire and its aftermath, notable the people and processes put in place to address the immediate human tragedy.  It is daunting.  

The fire, which lasted 3 days that October, went on to jump the Chicago River and destroy much of central Chicago and the Near North Side.  

Susie - talk about this as the foundaton for what Chicago has become today.

We walked in Chicago perhaps more than any other city we have visited.  We were located in South Chicago and found it easy to get anywhere in the city by bus or by taxi/uber (although I must confess it was difficult to figure out where/how to buy tickets for the elevated train in the loop.)

Blessed with lovely autumn weather, we explored: 

• The Chicago Riverfront with its wonderful pedestrian walkways.

• Grant Park - 319 acres in the loop’s business district and bordering Lake Michigan, the park is home to:

1. Millenium Park

2. Art Institute of Chicago

3. Buckingham Fountain

4. Maggie Daly Park

5. Museum Campus which in turn is home to three of the city’s most notable science oriented museums - the planetarium, acquarium, and museum of natural history

6. Petrillo Music Shell

7. Congress Plaza

8. And much much more

• The Chicago Cultural Center, the former Chicago Public Library located within the loop and in a building that is an architectural gem, saved from demolition by a calculated and well -timed comment to Mayor Daly by his wife. (Ahh…the role of fate).

• The American Writers Museum - an absolute gem

• The Chicago African American Museum

• The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry - some great exhibits involving train routes between Chicago and Seattle and also airplanes

• The John Hancock Building - panoramic view from the top

We walked the streets, explored different neighborhoods, drove to the outskirts of town to explore other neighborhoods, window shopped, ate great food (outside), met a college friend in the building that used to be home to the Chicago Athletic Association and filled our days with the smorgasbord of experiences Chicago offers.

We spent a scant 2 1/2 weeks in Chicago and could easily have stayed another 4 to 6 weeks.  We are eager to return!

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