One More Day In The Windy City
We had a great touristy day today, our last day in the windy city. We caught the Metra fast train downtown (it was so quick!) and walked a couple of blocks to the Sears (or as it’s now called, Willis) Tower. It’s one of the “super tall” buildings of the world and was the tallest building in the world for 22 years. They’ve recently installed the “Sky Walk”, which is a series of glass boxes that jut out the side of the building, with glass floors so you can look down and all glass walls and ceilings! They are 103 floors up so it’s so freaky!! I was probably the most chicken in the family (no surprise I know) but we all eventually got up the courage to take the plunge and step over the threshold, onto the glass floor to go out and stand in the box. It feels so weird! The views over Chicago are amazing and we couldn’t believe the size of Lake Michigan! Just a bit bigger than Narrabeen Lake! The city is just so flat as well, unlike San Francisco!
We then headed up to the main shopping district on North Michigan Ave and indulged in a bit more retail therapy! The clothes here are so cheap, we’d be crazy not to take advantage of that right?! Getting it all back into the bags will be interesting! The jackets are so cool! All the winter stock is in the shops now of course, but being a bit cooler here in the mid-west, we didn’t really bring enough warm clothes so that was all the excuse we needed to buy a couple more things
Our original intention was to go and explore the Navy Pier area, where there are a few rides for the kids and a giant ferris wheel over the lake but we got a bit carried away at the shops so we got a cab home to Lisa and Steve’s place. We are pretty sure the cabbie got lost because what was supposed to be a 20 minute trip from the city ended up being almost an hour and a half! It gave us a good chance to see more of Chicago though, (even if we were squashed, 5 across the backseat of a normal sedan being subjected to the drivers’ taste in hip-hop tunes! They certainly aren’t worried about the laws regarding seat belts here! Much more lax than in Australia!)
Just as we were getting home, Gillian the babysitter was arriving to look after all the kids. She apparently ordered them the BIGGEST pizzas the kids had ever seen! Lisa and Steve had organised to take us to a work function for Steve’s work. He’s on the board of a magazine called “Christian Century” and they had an annual cocktail party and guest speaker at the Arts Club of Chicago. It was very swanky indeed! The speaker was a girl called Christa Tibbet who runs a radio show in Chicago called “On Being” and she was a fantastic speaker! It was really interesting. They also took us out for dinner beforehand at such a beautiful little restaurant called “Coco Payzo” which had murals all over the walls and it felt like a little slice of Italy. The food was scrumptious too.
We have packed up all our bags now and set the alarm for the ungodly hour of 4:30am! Our plane is leaving way too early but that was the only flight available. I’m sure we’ll pay for it tomorrow! We’ve really enjoyed our stay in Chicago!
