CHICAGO Continued

After our river cruise we had a free afternoon in Chicago. We walked down the lovely Michigan Avenue, had lunch and then walked to Millenium Park. It is a large park in the city full of art and fun activities for families.

In the park we saw:
The Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry, is the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue in USA. Jay Pritzker was an American entrepreneur born in Chicago. He established the Pritzker Prize for architecture.

"Cloud Gate"  affectionately known as "the bean" is a highly polished, stainless steel, interactive sculpture by Arish Kapoors. It reflected you and the city. You could walk under it and look up to see all sorts of reflections. Fascinating fun.

Can you see us taking pictures of ourselves? It is not flattering it sort of stretches you sideways and makes you look fatter than you really are...I think, unless we've put on weight eating hamburgers every day.

The Crown Fountain designed by Jaume Plensa is made up of two 50ft glass towers with water pouring over the top and down all sides, with a splash pad in between for kids to cool off.

Changing video images of 1000 Chicagoans are projected onto the two facing sides of the towers.

That evening we went with the group to dinner at Carson's Restaurant famous for barbecued ribs. It was a huge meal. Then we went to the Willis Tower, which used to be Sears Tower but the naming rights changed in 2003. It is the tallest building in USA standing 442m high with 108 floors and that is where we went. 

 It was exciting going up in the lift and seeing the floor numbers flash past at a frightening speed. The view from the Skydeck was breathtaking.

  

We are trying to look brave standing out on the glass floor ledges hanging outside the building.

Notice that neither of us are looking 

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DETROIT AND CHICAGO

Our bus tour continued from Niagara to Detroit. Unfortunately, Detroit is a run down city with many empty houses in a state of disrepair. We stayed out of town in a very nice hotel and we were advised not to go out at night.

The next morning we visited the Henry Ford Museum. It is a huge building covering 12 acres and it "is filled with history that tells the stories of men and women whose vision and courage changed the world."

There were exhibits of automobiles, trains, aeroplanes, furniture, agriculture and American History. It was an excellent museum. After a few hours there we were on the bus for Chicago.

It is the most beautiful city to enter. There are many parks and a museum campus situated in parklands. We had a photo stop before we entered the city. I didn't realise that Chicago spreads out along the shore of Lake Michigan for 30 miles.

Once in the city it is clean, green and alive with people. Michigan Avenue is similar to 5th Avenue in NYC. 

The river winds through the city. We went on a river and lake cruise on this boat.

The river is crossed by many bascule bridges ( opening bridges using a counterweight system). Chicago is famous for its bascule bridges, the design was copied in other parts of the world but Chicago boasts of having more than any other city in the world. There are about 40 of them.

This is a double decker one, trains on top and cars beneath.

Our local guide told us all about each building that we passed but I can't remember much. (Information overload) However, I was impressed with the tower on the left with an irregular blue pattern down the side. The architect was a woman and she won the prize for the best designed building in the year that it was built. It is hard to see in the photo but it had an irregular textured type of pattern on all sides.

Our boat took us through a lock into Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful colour and hard to believe that it can sometimes freeze in winter.