C H I C A G O

There's some of the skyline of Chicago as viewed from the Navy Pier. We had quite the day yesterday. Woke up at a reasonable time, had a brunch downstairs in the hotel and then caught a free shuttle to take us to the commuter train station at the airport. There we hopped a train to take us right into downtown Chicago.

First stop... the Sears tower. Here's me standing in front of it:



We hopped a ride to the top and spent some time taking in the views and reading a lot about the history of Chicago. Here are a couple of views from up high:





After departing the tower we began to walk around the maze of buildings in downtown. What a site. You have some of the most amazing looking buildings all surrounded by the older buildings of Chicago's past. Some looking like they were ready to fall down, but most just looked spectacular. The city was extremely clean and the people very friendly. We decided to head towards Navy Pier in Chicago which is a touristy kind of place where there are some site seeing boats and mini cruise ships around a little shopping and dining area that is on a large pier that heads out into the waters east of the City. It was a very long walk and along the way we came across a huge outdoor amphitheatre which was amazing. There was an international band of some sorts playing. They were doing some sound testing and man were they good. So we got a mini free show for 20 mins. There was also this crazy weird sculpture of highly polished stainless steel too. As pictured here:



It was pretty neat, very reflective. Here's a pic of the other pilot and I in the reflection. Hard to tell it's not a mirror, rather a weirdly shaped reflective piece of artwork.




So we finally arrive at the Pier after a LONG walk. We toured around a bit, had some cold refreshements, chilled out a bit and then started getting hungry for dinner. The plan was to head to the Cheescake Factory which is located at the bottom of the John Hancock building. We eventually found our way there an hour or so later and arrived at this very cool restaurant. We opted for the patio outside because the weather was super nice and the views around this little courtyard were quite amazing. We were surrounded by skyscrapers and beside us was a big waterfall and the restaurant itself which was designed to look like the inside of an apple pie. We ate too much for dinner and didn't have any room for cheesecake.. that kinda sucked. Oh well. Here was the view looking up from our table towards the top of the John Hancock building and also a look at the restaurant.. can you see the theme inside!?





After dinner we were headed off to the House of Blues which is a huge bar and venue for some great blues music. After walking around for quite a long time to find the place we eventually come to realize that they were holding a private party that night and we were not able to get in! What a rip off. So we started walking around some more and decided that we were at least going to find a decent pub and have a couple of beers before heading back to the hotel. So we realize we are clueless as to where any good establishment might be; so we walk into a store that's open and asked a couple of people. We walk back quite a ways to an area which was rich in bars/pubs/clubs. At this point we've crossed over the Chicago River about 9 times in our efforts! We pick an intersting little Irish pub, head in and have a couple of drinks. At one point I wanted to have a Rye and Gingerale, and the waitress/bartender had never heard of Rye... what the hell?!!??!!? They had no Rye in this joint and had never heard of it... crazy! Oh well..

It was now 1130 pm and time to catch one of the last few trains back to the airport so we could get shuttled back to the hotel. We make it back in pretty good time and then it was off to bed. I'm writing this blog entry on Tuesday morning and we've just found out that instead of leaving tomorrow morning, we will be flying home tonight. We won't be getting back into Calgary til about 2am. Lovely. Not only that but we are going to have massive headwinds the whole way... yuck.

Well there you have it. My adventures in Chicago. This has been by far one of my most favorite destinations. This city rocks.

P.S. You can click on all of those pics to enlarge them.