Chi-Town!

How do I even begin?

Chicago is AHmazing. I guess to begin, I'll say that it is beautiful. This city values architecture, so none of the buildings are the same, many with the traditional, elegant older look about them and many more with modern, in some cases almost space-age, build. The skyline is magnificent and can be seen in full in a ton of places in the city, such as the Buckingham Fountain, and other spots along Lake Michigan. To add to what I was saying about how pretty the city is, I have to applaud Chicago's horticulturalist. On every street there are flowers, in all different arrangements. And they aren't just generic flowers--many of them are very ornate, beautiful kinds. The streets are clean, and the people, so far, are incredible nice, and go out of their way to help you. So far, so good. If I tried to do Chicago's character justice, I would write way too much.

Aunt Amy and I started off headed towards the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears tower. Along the way, we ran into a nice little street market, where at least 30 vendors were selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables, among them softball sized beets and purple cauliflower. We encountered our first sculpture, a ridiculously huge red thing. Yes, that's all I can say to explain.

Once we got to what I will continue to call the Sears Tower, we were sat down for a little movie about Chicago/the Sears Tower's history, which proved very interesting. It told us how the Sears Tower's shape was thought of by arranging cigarettes at different heights, how many square feet the building is (4.5 million), the amount of bathrooms (something outrageous), the length of pipes (also something ridiculous), etc. The elevator we were on went at a rate of 24 floors per second. Once we got up there, the view was amazing. On a clear day, and they don't get much clearer than ours was, you can see 50 miles. They also have two completely glass boxes which extend over the street, so you can look straight down. I recommend visiting.

We went to the Museum of Modern Photography, which was small, but free. Afterwards, we took a leisurely stroll along the Lake Michigan's coast, where the water is a very pretty green/blue and the sailboats all bob picturesquely. We then illegally sprinted across a six lane highway and its median to get to Buckingham Fountain, a very large and attractive fountain. We passed many gardens with many gorgeous layouts and made our way to Berghoff's, a famous German restaurant (delish).

The parks, two of which we toured elaborately--Millennium Park and Grant Park (where Obama gave his victory speech)--are incredible. Millennium Park is full of crazy sculptures. The Crown Fountain consists of two big rectangular prisms which project videos of faces onto each other while water cascades down. When the person's mouth changes to squirt out water, a stream of water shoots out. Very strange. The Cloud Gate, known to me and many people as the Mirror Bean, is a just what it sounds like: a giant, bean-shaped mirror. Here is a picture of it:

I had a lot of fun taking pictures in that bean. We walked along, saw more sculptures, more beautiful gardens. Our last stop of the day was the Historic Chicago Water Tower, which is the only building which didn't burn down in the Great Chicago Fire. It is very pretty, and serves as the center of a sort of square. Dinner was at a place called Big Bowl, Asian cuisine, which was entertaining just because it has a HUGE bowl over it's entrance.

This morning Aunt Amy fetched Aunt Tricia from the airport, so she has now joined us on our journey. We started off by going to Navy Pier, which is seriously a little kid's dream place. There is, among other things, a hot air balloon (today was the first day it was ever open!), a ferris wheel, a children's museum, an IMAX theatre, a carousel, one of those big swing things, boat races--everything.

We went up in the ferris wheel, which gave us this amazing view of the city:

and this one:

I'm almost done telling you about Chicago, but I cannot finish because I have to go to dinner. More later.