Chi me up, Chi me down

Arty boat tour shot

Top of the Must-See List for Chicago was an architectural boat tour. Although this doesn't sound terribly promising on paper, it lives up to its billing by being an informative 90 minute-lecture on the history of Chicago's most significant buildings - delivered by a genuine expert from the Chicago Architecture Foundation - which doubles up as a pleasant introductory riverbound meander around the downtown area.

The tour was certainly a more pleasant journey than the long El ride into the city, which we had to take every day because for reasons of (can you guess?) extreme parsimony we were ensconced in a hotel way out in the northern suburbs. The El (short for elevated railway) is one of those iconic things which turns out to be something of a disappointment. What looks fun and quirky on ER and in the movies is pretty drab up close. The circular section around The Loop - the heart of the City, at least in the financial sense - is quite cool and finding the right line and direction is an interesting challenge, but the rest gets old real fast. Not all of it is even elevated, in the same way as some of the London Underground sits above ground I guess, and some sections run through the middle of big highways, which is somewhat disconcerting.

Anyway though, the boat tour inspired us to head straight for the Architecture Foundation itself, wherein you can see a cool scale model of the city. Obviously British visitors can smile smugly at one another when any of these johnny-come-lately American structures are described as "old", but there is something gloriously overblown about US metropolises (metropoli?) against which our cities pale in comparison. Most of the old, wooden Chicago burnt down in 1871 - this only inspired them to build an even bigger city out of the ruins, and this time from less flammable materials.

Across the way from there is the Art Institute of Chicago - presumably very famous in artier circles to begin with, but that place what's in Ferris Bueller for the rest of us. It's an impressive place, with huge selections of impressionist paintings and works even an art-dunce like myself will recognise such as American Gothic, Nighthawks and Matisse's The Bathers. 

The Cloud Gate. Hours of fun

The Institute sits at the northern end of Grant Park, which stretches southwards along Lake Michigan and also includes the tourist triple-header of the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium and Shedd Aquarium. We only visited the first of these, whose most notable feature is the bonkers levels of merchandising based around one dinosaur skeleton (Sue the T-Rex, if you're interested).

The park seems to be the focal point of the city - it's where Obama made his victory speech in 2008, and hosts lots of festivals including Lollapalooza since 2005 which I was surprised to learn. We were a couple of weeks late for this, although Coldplay were one of the headliners so maybe this was dodging a bullet somewhat.

To the north, Millennium Park is kind of an extension to the above. It boasts some lovely sculptures including the Crown Fountain which doubles up as a video sculpture and the Cloud Gate (aka "The Bean"), which is the big metal blob-thing at the end of Source Code, fact fans.

No visit to a north American city would be complete without going up a stupidly tall building - and in Chicago there's two on the Must-See List. Besides the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, one of the world's tallest, it's also worth heading up Michigan Avenue and up to the 96th floor of the John Hancock Center for a drink in the Signature Lounge bar. Sure, the interior is reminiscent of a cruise ship, and sure you're herded in and out of there like little more than cattle, but you know... lovely views and that.


Hmm, what else... The Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio tour in the leafy suburb of Oak Park was a nice laid-back way to spend our final afternoon in the city. It's also worth getting away from Downtown and at the very least taking a stroll around some of the trendier districts such as Wicker Park, Bucktown and Lakeview. The Wrigleyville area seemed pretty interesting too from what I saw of it (more on that below).

We were also treated, in a wild swing away from parsimony, to a few meals in the sort of quality eateries with which I am sadly lacking much familiarity. The food at Takashi in Bucktown was lovely in an elaborate sorta way, and they did give us free ice cream as an apology for slow service (which wasn't even especially slow). They missed a trick by not adding turrets and a drawbridge to the building and calling it Takashi's Castle though, obviously. My favourite establishment was Longman and Eagle on Kenzie Avenue, a gastropub-type place with ultra-friendly staff and a divine, unpretentious brunch menu.

Oh, and of course we had to try traditional Chicago-style pizza - if you've never had one before, think the thickest crust you've ever seen and double it, and you'd be vaguely close. I think there was a pizza somewhere amongst all that pastry but I couldn't be certain.


Probably the highlight of my trip was catching a Cubs game at the hallowed Wrigley Field. Like baseball itself, this place is as American as apple pie, Hollywood and underpowered flush toilets. From the stands it manages to feel like a cosy local park rather than the home of a multimillion dollar franchise in a massively high-profile sport - albeit one which it's easy for English sports fans to dismiss as glorified rounders with added steroids.

My major source of bafflement is the number of games they play - surely when you have a hundred-odd fixtures per season each individual match starts to mean less? But I very quickly became wrapped up in the action as my sporting passions kicked in.

It helped that this was a great match, with the Cubs coming from behind to win in the 10th inning, although the real secret of baseball's appeal is that like any successful sport it has long-since transcended its origins to become a collective ritual. The hot dogs, the beers, the national anthem, the organ music, the random celebrity guest who throws the first pitch and who, at Wrigley at least, leads the crowd in a full-throated rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the seventh inning stretch... In a country that's pretty high on religious experiences, a ballgame may be the biggest of the lot.