My friend Harv got seconded to Chicago on a couple of days notice and was looking at spending a couple of months with nothing to do. I also know a couple of girls who live in Chicago because I met them while I was in Morocco at about this time last year. That, coupled with the fact I was bored out of my mind and consumed by wanderlust convinced me it was time to visit the "Windy City".
I came to this conclusion on Tuesday night at about nine o'clock while sitting at my computer. In an internal debate lasting all of fifteen seconds I convinced myself it was a good idea, acquired a ticket via the net, asked the boss for Friday off and packed my bags. Friday rolled around with alarming speed and I was forced to lunge out of bed and grab the nearest transport in order to make my 10.30am flight. The flight itself was uneventful and I managed to acquire the much coveted four-centre-seat-spread to catch a couple of hours sleep before we landed.
The weather in Chicago was the first sign of an imminent good weekend - sunny and nineteen degrees Celsius. After the grey skies of London I felt positively giddy. I felt like stripping off my shirt and prancing around the tarmac singing. Climate does strange things to you.
From the airport I took the "el" (elevated train) downtown to Chicago to hook up with Harv. Getting out at the Washington street station I decided to take advantage of the fine weather and eschewed the classic yellow taxi for more ambulatory form of locomotion. It gave me a chance to see the city as well as catch some sunshine.
Frank Lloyd Wright spent a lot of time in Chicago and whether it was his influence on Chicago that changed it or Chicago that influenced him I'm not sure. I suspect the latter. In any case, Chicago's streetscapes are pleasing to the eye with the vast majority being dominated by solid, square, multi-storey structures which seem to be laid like ranked pieces on a chess-board. The buildings vary from stark modernistic glass pillars to more ornate pre-war constructions to baroque turn of the century buildings. The overall effect is a tidy show case of high rise architecture. The streets are also wide and pleasant in the manner of many a city planned for and built on flat ground.
I eventually found my friend's office and extracted him from a training course so we could organise our weekend. We had a few things to see but first I wanted to get in touch with the girls I met in Morocco. Harv and I grabbed a bite to eat and then hopped on the L again, this time the red-line heading for Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field is the home of Chicago's favourite baseball team the Cubs. The Cubs have an almost fanatical following in the city, not withstanding the fact that they hardly ever won a game.
We weren't actually going to a game, I'd arrived on too short notice for that, but we headed out to a bar within spitting distance of the field and settled down for a drink. After a couple of rounds in the Gingerman we sauntered off to the "Corner Pocket" and played pool until they threw us out at 1am. This, I thought, was a particularly good demonstration of stamina from me since it was about 6am in my timezone.
The next morning I slept in a little, but not long enough to spoil the chance to take advantage of the sparkling weather. We strolled up through the town and over the network of canals that used to be part of the trading empire that was Chicago's lifeblood. We eventually hit the expressway on the edge of Lake Michigan and grabbed a cab down to the waterfront and the Field Museum of Natural History.
The Museum was relatively interesting but the two key exhibits that both Harv and I would have liked to have seen were unavailable. The first was Sue, the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever found. Sue was unavailable because she is powdering her nose for her grand unveiling on May 12th. The second was the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit which was unfortunately sold out. How exactly you could sell out the ability to view a bit of parchment wasn't made clear to us but the Dead Sea scrolls were unavailable too.
The museum's exhibits were relatively interesting but consisted largely of the usual collection of sacred artefacts stolen from an indigenous people, this time of course the American Indian. The totems in the Field Museum are impressive and would be more impressive still if they were back with their original owners instead of crammed into some dimly lit corner of the Museum.
After the museum we braved the arctic winds coming off Lake Michigan and strolled back into town. As we headed back to Harv's place in the quaintly named "Streeterville", we got a taste of why Chicago is called the windy city. In the space of four stops on the metro the temperature dropped ten degrees, the wind picked up and mist rolled in off Lake Michigan.
After a brief sprint home to collect some more clothes, we spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around the shops on the swanky Michigan Ave and then headed out to meet up with some more friends. We met them in a pub called the "US Beer Co" which specialised in. . . well you get the idea. They had just been out to barrack for one of their friends teams in, that un-American of all things, a rugby match. Their team had unfortunately lost quite heavily. Since the girls were already over tired and we didn't want to waste Sunday sleeping in we headed off home before midnight.
The next morning we rolled out of bed and strolled through the town again before heading out to the Adler planetarium near Meigs Field. The planetarium features the usual museum style astronomy displays and the "world's most advanced" big screen projector. This one, the narrator explained, was powered by real-time feed from a computer rather than which use the old photosensitive pigments on strips of celluloid method. The show was quite inspiring and made even my bloated ego feel astronomically insignificant.
After the planetarium we had time enough for a comprehensive and leisurely lunch in another ubiquitous American restaurant chain (TGI Friday's I think). Over lunch Harv and I talked about life, unrequited romance and high explosives as we are want to do. My plane was leaving at 5pm so I headed off soon after that and caught the train back to Chicago O'Hare for the six hour flight to London. I landed at 5.40am at Heathrow and was straight back into the office where I managed to remain upright for eight solid hours before I went home to collapse.
Travelling in America is easy and involves none of the incipient paranoia that a foreign country normally induces. Sure, crime rates may be high in America and the bad guys all carry guns, but at least they're polite about robbing you and you'll know when they're asking for your wallet because they'll be doing it in English. Still, the most dangerous thing you'll usually face in America is being mowed down on the sidewalk by an overweight bus driver from New Jersey.
I liked Chicago more than either of the other U.S. cities I have visited, San Francisco and Seattle. Both of the west coast cities felt cramped to me, too many people in too small a space. Chicago has a real sense of space and presence.
Chicago is the sort of city I could settle down in if it weren't for the six feet of snow it sees every winter and the lack of sea-side. I'd like to go back to Chicago some day but there's an awful lot of places to visit between now and then!
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