I know I promised more Quakecon stuff but I’d rather do a write up about my first two days in Chicago. I also promised to do daily updates but you can clearly see how well that has gone. Leaving the Hilton Anatole at the eye bleeding time of 6am, we headed to DFW airport for our 8am flight to Chicago. Compared to our previous flights this one went bye in a cool 2 hours, feeling pretty much like landing mere minutes after takeoff.
One short shuttle bus ride downtown and we are out our hotel, the Hilton Palmer House, situated in an area of Chicago known as the loop. The loop is ringed by the ‘L’ Train system, an elevated train system that is iconic of this city.
As with all of our travels, the first step is always to get your bearings. Walking out the front door with nothing more than a sense of adventure and hunger for food, we headed out into the unknown. Our hotel is a couple of blocks from Millennium Park, an L train station, three hop on hop off tour bus stops, lots of food places and some excellent views.
For lunch we grabbed some hot dogs followed by some Chicago style pizzas. Cliched, I know, but cheap and tasty.
Our first afternoon was then spent figuring out what we wanted to do, how we can get to anything further than walking distance, and anything else of interest. Chicago has an extensive mass transit system run by the CTA, who provide unlimited ride passes for their network. For $23 USD you can buy a 7-day unlimited ride pass which gets you access to the ‘L’ train, CTA busses and subway network.
With time drifting through dusk towards night we headed to the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States. It has 108 usable floors of space and the 103rd floor is dedicated as the SkyDeck, a publicly accessible observation deck. In less than a minute you go from first floor to the 103rd floor, at a speed of nearly 30km/h. Upon stepping out of the lift you are immediately greeted with a panoramic view of the city spread before you. My command of the English language is not good enough to give the view it’s due description so I’ll leave it to the photographs.
Day two in Chicago started with our Hop On Hop Off bus tour of the city. The tour took us on a tour of the downtown and surrounding areas of the city. I didn’t take many photos from the bus itself because it was impossible to get decent shots without getting lots of other heads in the bottom of the frame. Nonetheless I did take a few including this shot of the skyline including the John Hancock Centre on the right and a fragment of the Lake Point Tower, located near the Navy Pier, on the left.
It was around 2:30pm when we decided to head to the suburb of Oak Park to do the tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. Designed and built in 1889, it is a precursor and experiment for a lot of design ideas that would later become the ‘Prairie style’ of architecture.
The house is quite beautiful and shows many traits that would later make Frank Lloyd Wright famous. His use of horizontal elements, like Roman Bricks, inbuilt furniture, the use of optical illusions and space compression in order to make rooms look larger and prototypes of what would later become his distinctive art glass are all to be found here.
Unfortunately I couldn’t take photographs inside the house.
We left with plans on going back to Oak Park to do the guided tour and take more photographs of the area including the numerous houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
A short drinks break and a quick search of the internet (free wifi is common and quite convenient), we head off in search of dinner.
Also I managed to capture EVIDENCE that Chicago is really a domed city with the sky being held up with large support towers. Observe the lightweight tower going through the cloud layer and connected to the skybox.
Or maybe not. I still like the idea of a domed city, though.
I suppose that soduns and smells just about right.