Windy City weekend

In February 2005, Garry and I enjoyed a whirlwind weekend stopover in Chicago. To date, it remains our first and only visit to the Windy City. At the time, I was conducting a sales roadshow around the USA spruiking the virtues of my company's Asia Pacific network. Over the course of a week, I attended a whirlwind of meetings in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland. Garry kindly joined me for the ride.

As luck would have it, my hectic travel schedule was bisected by a weekend. Garry and I took advantage of this and arranged an itinerary that included a weekend in Chicago. In the end, our flight from Los Angeles landed shortly before 3:00pm on Saturday, giving us 1.5 days to explore the city before my next sales meeting.

We made the most of our brief stopover. After checking into our hotel downtown (Sheraton Grand) we made our way to the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower). For more than 25 years this was the tallest building in the world. Regular readers of this blog know I'm a die-hard skyscraper fanatic. Therefore, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to check out the view from its observation deck on the 103rd floor. At 412 metres above ground level, it’s still the highest observation deck in the United States.

We reached the Sears Tower observation deck shortly before dusk. This meant we got to see Chicago by day, and by night. It was an awe-inspiring experience watching the city light up as night fell. Without a doubt, Chicago is a mind-bogglingly huge metropolis.

Once we'd had our fill of city lights, we made our way to the shores of Lake Michigan to spend the evening soaking in the sights and sounds of Navy Pier.  This pier stretches more than 1000 metres into the lake and is home to an array of shops, cultural venues, an amusement park, and other popular attractions. The most iconic of these is probably the Ferris Wheel. However the queue to ride it was too long for our liking so we gave it a miss. 

Sunday morning dawned cold and cloudy. We woke to the sight of snow falling, with light drifts accumulating on the ground. We quietly congratulated ourselves for visiting Sears Tower and Navy Pier the previous day. A low cloud shrouded the tower and we're sure the pier was a rather bleak and depressing place that day.

We made the most of the cold weather by venturing indoors to explore two of Chicago's preeminent museums; The Field Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry. We spent half a day exploring their respective star attractions including Sue, a famous Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, the Apollo 8 command module, and the record-breaking Spirit of America jet-propelled car. This car broke the land speed record twice, reaching a top speed of more than 800 km/h.

However, the most impressive attraction we encountered was, without a doubt, Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds at the Museum of Science and Industry. This is a traveling exposition of dissected human bodies, animals, and other anatomical structures of the body preserved through von Hagen's patented process of plastination. We both agreed we'd never seen an exhibition quite like it before.

The following morning, I rose early and made a quick dash across downtown to visit the observation deck at the John Hancock Building before heading out for my first meeting. This angular black steel building is probably Chicago's most recognisable skyscraper. 

However, unlike the Sears Tower, it’s located close to the lakeshore. As a result, it offers visitors some stunning views of the lake and its urban shoreline. Garry wasn’t the least bit tempted and chose to stay in bed.

One of the more interesting sights visible from the Hancock Building's 94th-floor observation deck is the Historic Water Tower, a rather phallic 19th-century Gothic limestone landmark. I mistook it for the city's memorial to the Great Chicago Fire. According to Wikipedia, this conflagration, burned from October 8–10, 1871. It killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles (9 km2) of the city including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. 

One of the more unusual sights in Chicago has to be a series of fragments from famous structures embedded in the walls of the Chicago Tribune newspaper's headquarters. Almost 150 fragments are on display including a chunk from the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and the Berlin Wall.

Finally, a quick shoutout for Cloud Gate, Chicago's shiny kidney bean-shaped sculpture in the heart of downtown. This 40-metre-long elliptical sculpture is clad in highly polished stainless steel plates that reflect Chicago’s famous skyline and the clouds above. You can see an image published online of Cloud Gate below.

Garry had spotted it earlier in the day while I was attending a business meeting.  He'd stumbled across it while wandering through Millenium Park. I got to see it briefly from our taxi as we headed back to our hotel to collect our bags before heading to the airport. In front of the sculpture, as we waited at a red light, in scenes reminiscent of New York's renowned Rockefeller Plaza, we watched ice skaters carving up the ice on a temporary rink. 

Cloud Gate wasn't the only quirky work of art we encountered in Chicago. I can't end this post without mentioning a sculpture, called "Short Cut", on display outside the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Arts (MCA). Created by two Scandinavian artists, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, it depicts a white Fiat car and caravan bursting out of the surrounding pavement. I gave it 10 out of 10 for originality!