Windy City

Day 8: Chicago!

Michael decided to take advantage of his relative proximity to a friend from home who was currently attending University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and caught a train up there. None of the rest of us had expressed any particular sites they wanted to see in Chicago, so I basically mapped out the city based on my favorite movies and TV show: Blues Brothers, Ferris Buehler and ER. It turns out this is a really good way to walk all over the place and see some pretty buildings without trying really hard. Jozef is also a fan of The Blues Brothers, so he was very amused by my ideas, and no one else seemed to mind.

Since we were staying in the suburbs, we took the Metra train in from Joliet to LaSalle Street. From that station, we walked down Van Buren looking for Elwood's apartment, which I was pretty disappointed not to find. From there we walked up State Street for quite a while, veering off to walk through the Honorable Richard J. Daly Plaza, which was definitely an important scene in Blues Brothers. They have a Picasso there! We continued up State Street until we found a visitors center on Pearson by the old Water Works building (quite pretty). This was probably the farthest away visitors center in the city, but one negative thing I have to say about Chicago is that finding a visitors center online was way more difficult than it should have been. Oh well. We saw a lot on our walk, and we got a map. From there:

Michigan Street Bridge, where Drs. Greene and Ross apparently had a late night chat in an early episode of ER. Didn't look familiar to me, but had a lot of lovely bridges and buildings around it and seemed as good a route as any to walk back down.

River Walk Park, not from any movie or TV show in particular but seemed like a good idea. It was a pleasant walk by the river and down to the harbor.

Lower Wacker Drive, which Jake and Elwood Blues sped down in a quickly dying old police car to get the tax money to the aforementioned Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza. It was actually closed for construction, and not because hundreds of police cars had piled up.

Jozef wanted to see the Opera House, but it was also under construction so we couldn't go in.

We wandered down to the Sears Tower, which is apparently no longer called that, which I didn't know until we got to Chicago. It's now the Willis Tower, but I didn't really care enough to call it that. It's tall. I realized in looking at it that I probably have no concept of buildings that are over 50 stories, or maybe less. Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, the World Trade Center as it once was, other tall things... no clue. This didn't strike me as any taller than those buildings that I grew up looking at. But I saw it, and it was tall.

We spent some time in Millennium Park checking out the Cloud Gate, which was way cool.

Across the street was the Art Institute, which was pretty expensive to go in, but free to take pictures of the steps that Ferris, Cameron and Sloane ran up whilst cutting class.

We rested our feet for a little while at the edge of Grant Park before going to get a drink at a pub called Miller's. I had two pale ales (for comparison!) that were brewed in Chicago, one by Green Line and one by Half Acre called Daisy Cutter. I think I preferred the latter.

So much walking. Lots of great sites, but tired feet. Definitely fell asleep on the train ride back to Joliet and still slept like a champion that night.

getting our kicks

Monday 12 September. Day Seven.

We woke up slowly and took our time getting on the road, although the road du jour was a special one: Historic Route 66 (now mostly Interstate 55). A few of us had different ideas of what was important to stop and see in Illinois--

First, Springfield. Jakub really wanted a picture of a Springfield sign (Simpsons reference) but also to see Lincoln's tomb. We stopped in the state capital to pay our respects to Mr. Lincoln and his family.

Next, Pontiac. The guys were excited about the Route 66 Museum and this big mural of the Route 66 sign. We spent some time looking at old cars and Route 66 paraphernalia before...

Joliet! This was clearly my idea, although Jozef is a fellow fan of The Blues Brothers so was also pretty excited. We actually drove right through town--and right past the prison-- on our way to where we'd be staying outside of Chicago for two nights, with the aunt of a friend of Maciej's. After meeting her and her husband, we wandered around Joliet for a while, getting lots of pictures of the jail and figuring out the best way to get to Chicago the following day.

what we saw after Tennessee

After our awesome night out in Memphis, we had a pretty awful time trying to find our hotel in West Memphis, Arkansas. It had recently changed names but not really signage and was off a very confusing interchange... oh, Arkansas. My older brother had told me that would be the crappiest part of my drive, as he had recently driven through it and not enjoyed it, but I held out hope.

Before continuing on through Arkansas the next day, though, a few of us made a short return to Memphis to attend various churches. I dropped Maciej off at mass and Jakub and I went to a Presbyterian church a little further outside of downtown. Then, I had the great fortune to cross paths with my friend Dan-- we were campers together for five summers in a row, but now we only hang out once every few years when he's floated back north of the Mason-Dixon line. He went to college in Memphis and is still in the area, which I figured out after our adventures on Beale Street. We met up for breakfast at a historic restaurant called The Arcade, which had some awesome sweet potato pancakes. Good to catch up with Dan.

On our way. We checked out of the hotel and continued up the eastern side of Arkansas. I already summer up that drive, which brought us to St. Louis. I didn't expect the city to suck, but I certainly didn't expect it to be as pretty or cool as it was. We obviously started at the Arch (Jefferson Gateway Expansion National Park), where the Air Force Mid-America band was performing. We tried to go through the museum of expansion, but it had a really confusing layout so we kind of gave up.

We did a big loop around the city in hopes of finding a few particular landmarks after trying Imo's pizza, a local staple. I wasn't crazy about the cheese (it's some weird St. Louis cheese) but the thin crust was pretty good. So, wandering. The city hall was a really beautiful building. We walked past Union Station. We sought out the City Museum, which looked AWESOME but was closed. I guess I'll have to go back sometime, which wouldn't be terrible-- my good friend Emily is from the area, in fact, we stayed with her father that night (she lives in DC now). It was kind of funny to sleep in her bed, but definitely some good rest before our sojourn across Illinois...

beer of the day: Morgan Street Brewery's Red Lager