First Days in Chi Town
Good Morning All.
Well it’s Saturday morning and Lisa and I are now in a small town called Owosso in Central Michigan. We are between Lansing and Flint just about 90 miles East of Detroit. We got here last night after spending 3 days in Chicago.
We arrived at Midway at around 3 pm Central time Tuesday afternoon. I knew it would be a good trip when the flight attendant came on to the PA and said "thank you for flying Southwest. This is our final destination... Unless you wanna go back to Oakland!" Right then I had to laugh knowing that her felling was Chicago was much more fun than Oakland.
Almost immediately I noticed that my ideas about Chicago were completely misguided. The buildings were dirty from car exhaust, but the streets and El (elevated train system) were very clean; overly clean in fact. The people were polite and accommodating and by the end of the first day I had fallen in love with Chi Town.
I knew that I had a few destinations that I had to go to. On the top of my list were home town pizza favorites. So at the end of our first night in town we went to a place called Geno’s East for some deep dish Chicago-style classic pizza. We stuck with the basics and just got pepperoni. The pie was probably a little over 2 inches thick and piled high with cheese, sauce, and topping. The crust was made of some kind of hybrid between regular flour and a corn meal, It was crumbly but tasty. All-in-all it was good, not mind-bending or oh-my-god, but really good. It did not make me re-think my views on NY pizza being the best.
It didn’t take long to notice how bad the drivers are in Chicago though. In other major cities a driver will honk his horn as he is slamming on his brakes yelling "git outta my way." In Chicago the horn is used as a warning. A driver will honk at you to tell you "I am coming trough so you’d better move." Chicago drivers don’t slow down if you’re in their way, they leave the getting to you.
Another thing that I noticed about the city is that EVERY business uses revolving doors. Hotels, restaurants, even 7-11's use revolving doors; I have never seen so many in one city. I was thinking about coming back and making a photo-montage of just revolving doors; there had to be thousands of them.
On our second day in town we did some tourist stuff. We hit the Navy Pier which is kind of like the boardwalk in Santa Cruz; Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, and other carnival attractions. The Pier sits on Lake Michigan which was a beautiful shade of greenish blue; again, much cleaner than expected. Of course, you can’t see the other side making it seem much less like a lake and much more like an ocean. From there we walked around downtown for hours until we got to the Sears Tower.
The Sears Tower is the 3rd tallest building in the world and the tallest in the US at 103 stories (The twin towers were 110 stories, but shorter in actual feet). From the observation deck at the top we could see all of Chicago and other parts of Illinois. If it had been clearer we would have been able to see Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. From there we made it back to our hotel to rest for the evening.
That night (Wed. the 16th) we celebrated Lisa’s Birthday (her birthday is actually the 21st) By going out for a night on the town. We started at a place called The Kinzie Chop House where we had an amazing steak dinner and a fine bottle of wine. After that we took a cab over to Lincoln Park -- or as the cab driver called it, the gay district. We got to The Briar Street Theater just before 7:30 to get our seat for The Blue Man Group and settled in for the show. For those of you who have never seen the Blue Man Group, I highly recommend it, we had a blast. I will go into more detail at another time but, sufficed to say, it was well worth the effort.
After the show we were exhausted from all of the walking and sight seeing so we retired to our room for the next day’s festivities. Well, that’s all for now as we are heading into Lansing now for some more sightseeing. I’ll try to write some more as soon as I can. I hope you all are well and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Take care,
-Mike
Well it’s Saturday morning and Lisa and I are now in a small town called Owosso in Central Michigan. We are between Lansing and Flint just about 90 miles East of Detroit. We got here last night after spending 3 days in Chicago.
We arrived at Midway at around 3 pm Central time Tuesday afternoon. I knew it would be a good trip when the flight attendant came on to the PA and said "thank you for flying Southwest. This is our final destination... Unless you wanna go back to Oakland!" Right then I had to laugh knowing that her felling was Chicago was much more fun than Oakland.
Almost immediately I noticed that my ideas about Chicago were completely misguided. The buildings were dirty from car exhaust, but the streets and El (elevated train system) were very clean; overly clean in fact. The people were polite and accommodating and by the end of the first day I had fallen in love with Chi Town.
I knew that I had a few destinations that I had to go to. On the top of my list were home town pizza favorites. So at the end of our first night in town we went to a place called Geno’s East for some deep dish Chicago-style classic pizza. We stuck with the basics and just got pepperoni. The pie was probably a little over 2 inches thick and piled high with cheese, sauce, and topping. The crust was made of some kind of hybrid between regular flour and a corn meal, It was crumbly but tasty. All-in-all it was good, not mind-bending or oh-my-god, but really good. It did not make me re-think my views on NY pizza being the best.
It didn’t take long to notice how bad the drivers are in Chicago though. In other major cities a driver will honk his horn as he is slamming on his brakes yelling "git outta my way." In Chicago the horn is used as a warning. A driver will honk at you to tell you "I am coming trough so you’d better move." Chicago drivers don’t slow down if you’re in their way, they leave the getting to you.
Another thing that I noticed about the city is that EVERY business uses revolving doors. Hotels, restaurants, even 7-11's use revolving doors; I have never seen so many in one city. I was thinking about coming back and making a photo-montage of just revolving doors; there had to be thousands of them.
On our second day in town we did some tourist stuff. We hit the Navy Pier which is kind of like the boardwalk in Santa Cruz; Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, and other carnival attractions. The Pier sits on Lake Michigan which was a beautiful shade of greenish blue; again, much cleaner than expected. Of course, you can’t see the other side making it seem much less like a lake and much more like an ocean. From there we walked around downtown for hours until we got to the Sears Tower.
The Sears Tower is the 3rd tallest building in the world and the tallest in the US at 103 stories (The twin towers were 110 stories, but shorter in actual feet). From the observation deck at the top we could see all of Chicago and other parts of Illinois. If it had been clearer we would have been able to see Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. From there we made it back to our hotel to rest for the evening.
That night (Wed. the 16th) we celebrated Lisa’s Birthday (her birthday is actually the 21st) By going out for a night on the town. We started at a place called The Kinzie Chop House where we had an amazing steak dinner and a fine bottle of wine. After that we took a cab over to Lincoln Park -- or as the cab driver called it, the gay district. We got to The Briar Street Theater just before 7:30 to get our seat for The Blue Man Group and settled in for the show. For those of you who have never seen the Blue Man Group, I highly recommend it, we had a blast. I will go into more detail at another time but, sufficed to say, it was well worth the effort.
After the show we were exhausted from all of the walking and sight seeing so we retired to our room for the next day’s festivities. Well, that’s all for now as we are heading into Lansing now for some more sightseeing. I’ll try to write some more as soon as I can. I hope you all are well and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Take care,
-Mike
posted by Mike | 7:21 AM
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