The Concrete Jungle

Chicago in January is cold, really cold.  Cold enough to make my eyes feel hot when I walk inside somewhere after being blasted by constant icy winds.  We saw a lot of things one should see in Chicago, including Navy Pier, Millennium  Park and Grant Park, the icy shore of Lake Michigan. 

So far we've had two very different Chicago-style experiences -- stayed in a large apartment under construction (it looked abandoned from the outside) in Wicker Park, inches from the El (which actually makes a pleasant waterfall-like white noise as it shoots past).  The 5 (+ or -) inhabitants are musicians, both in the real world and in video game world, and led mostly nocturnal, beer-themed lives.  We had a good time with them.  

We moved on to our next host when my friends Allison and Chris (our road-trip buddies) made their way back to Fayetteville.  I sent back my cold weather clothes with them and am now bundled in layers upon layers and my friend Martin's old coats.  Martin, a friend from years back, lives in a high-rise studio apartment just one block from the lake.  His place is tiny, but perfect for the three of us.  

Here he is showing us where he lives (the taller one with the "x" on it):

And where do you work, Martin??

He is a generous and entertaining host who works at the Shakespeare theater on Navy Pier.  Yesterday we walked around the lakefront, Michigan Ave., and the pier and he gave us an informal tour of the theater.  I was fascinated by the ice on the water, Michael enjoyed the giant fan in the quasi-conservatory (we all did, the thing was huge) as well as the "architectural and artistic oddities of Millennium Park", and Martin, who sees this stuff all the time, was most interested in the NPR radio news story of Bill Richardson's withdraw from the Secretary of Commerce projecting loudly on the street.  

Giant fan (its hard to capture the scale):

Classic Chicago skyline shot:

We all saw through the far-seer to see what we could see:

And what did we saw??.....

A lighthouse!! 

The bean makes people want to do silly things:

A face...

But don't be fooled! This is all it was close-up:

So I'm not at all so great about retelling things in a linear fashion, so all I can give you is little snapshots.

We had lunch at this fantastic cheese shop where a nice and funny woman let us sample the finest cheeses I've ever, ever had, then educated us on each one.  This place blew me away (though the wind in Chicago is doing a good job at that too), and the sandwiches were too tasty to comprehend or even describe.  Ah, cities.  Michael had a sandwich with cured ham that came from a pig in Spain that was only allowed to eat acorns, so you can imagine the flavor.... or maybe you can't, its pretty random.   

Anyhow, its hard to imagine we'll be in 80 degree tropical weather tomorrow.  

One other thing... I was walking around the big bean again today to admire the Chicago skyline in all its warped splendor when I ran into someone I take classes with in Fayetteville!! How is that for serendipity?!  It seems whenever I'm in big cities they work their magic like this to bring things back down to a human scale.