Chicago "Rules"

Go to a Cub game
Check out the Art Institute
Shop at Marshal Fields
Take a skyscraper tour by the Chicago Architecture Foundation
Go to the Navy Pier and ride the Ferris wheel
Visit the Field Museum
Eat a Chicago hot dog
Ride the elevated subway trains around the loop

Quick Tips:

Parking costs a fortune. If you are flying into town, take the subway into the city and save yourselves a night.

Best Way To Get Around:

Public transportation is excellent here and I highly recommend it.

My wife and I stayed at the Palmer House Hilton from July 5-7. We purchased the room through Priceline.com and paid $50 per night. The Palmer House is approximately 100 years old and is a beautiful old hotel. The room we were given was spacious, quiet, had no view, and had a nice bathroom with an excellent shower. The carpeting was good and the linens were nice. I would rate this hotel 3.5 stars out of 5. The best part of the hotel was its location.

The Palmer House occupies an entire city block and is between Michigan Ave and State Street. The hotel is one block from the Art Institute and is right in the heart of the loop with hundreds of great shops, theaters, and restaurants. We stayed at the Hilton Towers down by the Field Museum but we found we did a lot less walking at the Palmer House.

One other thing I should point out. This hotel will give you worse treatment if you are a Priceline customer and better treatment if you are a Hilton Gold member. We were both but I would rather pay $50 bucks with less brown nosing than pay $200 and get better treatment.

I paid $47 per night for this property last month. I found it to be a great value and I had to use Priceline to get that rate.

I prefer the location of the Palmer House better but this is nice if you are interested in going to the many museums in the Grant park area. They also offer a shuttle bus to Water Tower Place between 10 and 6 every day.

The property is huge. It was once the largest hotel in the world. They have 1500+ rooms, which has been renovated and updated from 3000+ rooms. The lobby is grand and vibrant. Check out the fresco in the Michigan Avenue lobby while you''re there. Very cool.

I passed the long (15 or so) line of people waiting to check in and saddled up to the Hilton Honors check in counter. (I called the service center a week prior to my arrival with the goal of getting upgraded with my HH Gold status. I succeeded!)

I took the express elevator to the executive floor, and was greeted by a nice sitting room, a great lounge with gratis breakfast and hors d''oeuvres and an honor bar. The concierge on this floor was only for people staying on the executive floors, and helped me out immensely. I''ll get back to that. The view of Lake Michigan from the windows of the lounge was truly breathtaking.

We entered our room and found it to be nicely appointed, with mini-bar and 2 bathrooms. We did have a slight view of the lake and Grant Park.

When we decided to have dinner at a favorite German restaurant, the concierge was wonderful with reservations. Very courteous and efficient. Also, we were able to check out with the desk on the 24th floor instead of trying to maneuver through the masses in the lobby. Very nice.

Overall my stay went well, though I would not have been nearly as happy with the experience if I paid rack. A strange note; there was no posted rate for the room anywhere. I was under the impression that it was mandatory to display the rate.

What is a Chicago dog you ask? A Chicago dog is usually made from Vienna Beef which is Bull meat. This is supposed to give the hot dog a little more spice. Also the dog is covered with relish, hot peppers, tomatoes, onions, pickles, and mustard. I decided that I would try my luck and experience this Chicago tradition at the mother of all dog houses, Gold Coast Dogs.

I bumped into Gold Coast Dogs at the taste of Chicago and things were hopping. The person who took my order was super friendly which suprised me considering the volume of business they were doing and how hard they were working. Once I unwrapped this little gem and took a bite, I was in dog heaven. All of the condiments were like a big salad on the top of the hot dog and it was quite delicious.

Nestled in the heart of downtown Chicago, the Berghoff has been a Chicago institution for over 100 years. The waiters are all middle-aged men and have clearly been working here for many years. The place runs like a Bavarian clock, fast and efficient. The food is good and the prices are reasonable. Having run a retail store for over a decade, my wife and I are very tuned into how smoothly businesses run and this place impressed us. I timed the busboy on how fast he would notice and then clear my plate after I had finished my meal. The time? One minute six seconds.

The beer is OK but I am a bit of a beer snob. I ordered a turkey club sandwich and my wife ordered an eggplant parmesan looking dish. Both were good but the turkey on my sandwich was a little dry and needed some mayo.

Check out the walls and the decor. The walls are lined with old pictures of turn-of-the-century Chicago. The furnishings are authentic German pub with lots of real wood paneling and antique chandeliers lit by Edison reproduction bulbs. Stained glass finishes off the look and adds some nice color. Their other claim-to-fame is that the restaurant received the first liquor license in the city after prohibition. I like this place and would go back again.

A thirty minute drive south of downtown Chicago takes you to the University of Chicago campus where you can tour one of the most important residential designed houses of the twentieth century. The Robie House was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's crowning achievements and was the basis of what was to become known as the "prairie school" of architecture.

The most fascinating thing about this house is its modernity. This was built in 1909 and looks modern by today's standards. Great modern artists of the time were experimenting with abstraction and cubism and the Robie house reflects this trend. Wright used several techniques to accentuate the horizontal nature of the house. He used roman bricks that were long and thin and he also used dark mortar to fill in the vertical spaces of the brick.

It is ironic that this house was sold by the Robie family only 18 months after they moved in and less than twenty years of its life has been spent as a residence. The house was then used by a religious order as a kind of dormitory and is now at the beginning of a 10 year restoration program. I am planning to come back at the end of the restoration to see how it turns out. They have a lot of work to do.

One other thing I would like to mention is there is no front door. The Robies were private people and Wright knew this so he designed the house with the door around to the back of the house. Was Wright making a comment about city life when he designed a house that could double as a fortress? I'll let you decide.

The cost of the house in 1909 was about $50,000. It is going to cost $7,000,000 to renovate and restore. Here is a link Robie House

The Field Museum was fun but we went toward the end of the day and I was a bit tired and not in the mood for big crowds. The first thing you see upon walking into the main hall is Sue, the enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex which is worth the price of admission all by itself. There is some good educational writings on the T Rex around the base and it gives you a great perspective of its size since it is placed right next to two large elephants that were stuffed a few decades ago.

There is enough here for an eight hour visit but we had only 2. The other thing I wanted to mention is the extraordinary ancient Egypt exhibit. They actually took a real tomb apart and reassembled it right in the museum. There are lots of artifacts from hieroglyphics on the stone walls to real mummified Egyptians as well as jewelry and furniture. I was amazed by this exhibit but the crowds in the lower level were a real turn off. If you go to the Field Museum, go early and start with the Egyptian temple. Many of the upper level exhibits get scant attention and can be viewed later.

The upper floors house the great jade collection as well as really excellent exhibits on flora, butterflies, meteors, papa New Guinea, Tahiti, precious stones, fossils etc. Lots to see and absorb. Here is a link www.fmnh.org

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to educating the public on the fascinating history of Chicago Architecture. They offer over 40 different tours throughout the year by highly trained, enthusiastic guides.

We have taken three different tours over the years and the Historic Skyscraper tour is my favorite. Chicago is somewhat unique in that the entire city burnt to the ground at the exact time when technology about steel frame buildings and modern elevators was developed. The result was that young architects came to the city to rebuild and competed among themselves for commissions. Buildings started to go higher because of these factors and before long there was a new kind of architecture born called the skyscraper.

The tour takes you around the loop area and points out the many wonderful buildings built from the 1880s through the 1920s. My favorite building of the tour was the interior of the Rookery building and the exterior of the Santa Fe Building. This is a great way to get aquatinted with the city and is my favorite activity when visiting Chicago. Tours run about $10 for the walking versions. Here is a link for more information. www.architecture.org

The first week of July is when Chicagans of all shapes and sizes head down to Grant Park to enjoy the tasty treats offered up at the taste of Chicago. This is the largest festival in the country and they typically get over three million people who attend the event.

We booked our room with no idea that this Fest was going on and kind of stumbled into it on out way to the Field Museum. The place is packed with people and there were well over 200 food vendors from around the city trying to entice you with treats of all kinds.

We ate at three different places. I had never had a Chicago Hot Dog so we went over and ordered one at Gold Coast Dogs. We also had some chicken satay at a thai food stand and finished it off with a piece of cheesecake from Eli's Cheesecake Factory.

The best part of the Fest were the street performers who work the outer edges of the Fest. We were entertained by a puppeteer who did his routine to music and a brass band of young high school kids. It was a perfect way to enjoy a sunny Chicago afternoon. Here is a link Taste of Chicago

One of the many things I love about Chicago is that the city loves art and has dedicated much of its open courtyards, parks, streets and pavilions to the enjoyment and appreciation of art. In fact, there is a city ordinance that requires new building developments to contribute 1% of their total budget to art. This is why everywhere you walk in downtown Chicago there are sculptures and paintings and frescos on the towering new buildings.

Also a new development in the outdoor scene is the couch exhibits scattered throughout the downtown. Like the Cows before them the couches are decorated by local artists and placed around the city streets. It is a thoroughly enriching experience to hop on one when you are tired, or take pictures of them or talk about them to your friends and neighbors. At the end of the year they will be rounded up and sold at auction to support local arts programs. More cities should follow the lead of this innovative town.