The windy city
A city famed for its architecture, infamous for its crime rate; a city that lures millions of visitors every year in spite of the dreaded winters. I was going to spend thanksgiving last year in Chicago with a friend. My preparation started weeks in advance, reading up about how harsh the cold could be in the windy city and ordering winter wear online. I arrived in Chicago sometime after noon a day before thanksgiving. We flew straight into the lake Michigan before taking a turn to land, rewarding us with a strikingly beautiful view of the great lake and the downtown. I strolled across the airport wondering why not everybody dressed in thick jackets like I did. My jacket felt heavier than I am. I sat close to the exit doors that sent shivers down my spine every single time someone opened those to step out waiting for the friend who grappled with the holiday traffic to make it to the terminal.
After lunch at an Indian restaurant way past my mealtime, we drove to the Willis tower. We went up to the Skydeck, to look around the beautiful city from a glass balcony on the 103rd floor of the building. I wondered where the hours flew by, since I had landed sometime in the afternoon and it was dark already. We went for a walk on the beach which we hoped might make us hungry. This was my first time at a beach that was by a lake, not a sea and I was surprised to see people walking their dogs even as it was getting chillier. I had the iconic deep-dish pizza, a staple food to try while in Chicago for dinner. One such pizza is enough food for any normal person for a day, but I am not so normal when it comes to food.
The “Egyptian” room I stayed at was true to its name and made me wonder if mummies felt like I did in the room in their tombs, cozy and warm, if they felt anything at all. We had breakfast in the beautiful dining room stocked with curios and headed out. Though we intended to start our day at the Field museum which was one of the few places open in the city on Thanksgiving, the lake tempted us for a walk along its shore. Chicago was being rather kind to me, favoring me with a beautiful sunny day. We did not have enough of the lake as we headed to the museum, eager to see it all. It houses everything from dinosaur fossils to Egyptian mummies. I probably sounded more like a snob than a museum expert, recalling my New York museum visits and comparing this to that way too often than I would have liked. In an attempt to showcase a live dinosaur at the Jurassic world special exhibit, a man in a dinosaur costume walked around with some light and sound effects. It left us in splits, making us pity dinosaurs rather than being scared of them. It was dark when we stepped out having spent the entire day at the museum, without suffering even an iota of boredom. What I learnt that day is that the main reason for any being to evolve seems to be to attract mates. Feathers, horns, you name it and it came about for to entice interest in potential mates.
We braved the chilly winds of Chicago walking through Grant park that houses the Buckingham fountain which was devoid of any water at that time, taking a quick look at the bean whose point of existence is not very clear to me, and a huge Christmas tree brightly decorated. We dined at a fancy (any place that has people using forks and knives to eat is “fancy” to my eye) French restaurant that night, bringing my awkwardness to its best (worst).
The tall buildings rising on either side of the Chicago river would make for a beautiful backdrop that you would not want to miss if you are into photographs. This is the view that greeted us as we went to get tickets for an architecture river cruise. The Nutella café in downtown beckoned us, what with the adage that you cannot make everyone happy unless you are a Nutella jar. It was teeming with families with children of all age. We were glad we found a place to sit, but not so much about what we ate, probably because it was too sweet and heavy to be breakfast. We passed by the bean again as we headed to the art institute of Chicago, this time in broad daylight. There definitely was one purpose to this structure that everybody seemed to understand, you could take funny photos of yourself and the surroundings with the reflection. Also, did you know that it is actually called the cloud gate and not just the bean?
We started off on the wrong foot at the art institute housed in a beautiful building in the Grant park, scouring through galleries of European art looking for something that is truly mind-blowing. Those were biblical paintings and seemed too repetitive to me. It was better as we moved on to the renaissance and medieval art. The arms and armor gallery was the most interesting of all the sections we could incorporate into our visit that lasted only a few hours. I was far too tired to acknowledge all the non-Indians admiring our Gods and Goddesses as we wound up in the Indian art gallery.
As for the architecture cruise, I was hungry and tired and trying not to doze off. The host was funny and livened up the atmosphere. Every building that we passed by was an architecture marvel in his eyes, but I found the anecdotes he shared to be more interesting, especially the one about the Chicago fire of 1871 which destroyed a major part of the city. Apparently, it was a cow in a barn that kicked a lantern and caused the fire. I was relieved that I could finally have food when we got off. Mediterranean cuisine is what we chose that day. We struggled to walk straight even as the wind that seemed to be strong enough to blow me away kept striking again and again as we walked to the navy pier. The centennial wheel, an iconic part of the city which I had seen earlier while on the cruise, was our destination. We got on it for an amazing nighttime view of the Chicago skyline from the lake, this time much closer and beautiful than what I had seen while on my flight. As I hoped I could get on it once more when one round ended, the wheel did not stop spinning and we went around three times altogether.
We spent some more time walking on the pier. Since we had more time on our hands, we decided to explore the games nearby and went into a maze. That did not seem to take us too long but was decidedly fun. Something prompted us to catch a movie at a theater nearby and off we went. We were most likely the last ones to have entered the theater and had to earn the wrath of some elderly people who did not want to be bothered by us asking them to move for us to be seated together but were grateful to a lady and her daughter who obliged. I did not quite get the movie, touted as a “coming of age film”. We only had time for a quick subway dinner and to get to our places of stay after that.
My last breakfast in Chicago was at a place where I felt like we had barged into someone’s house and they were being nice to us and feeding us. It was a big family though and they did not seem to mind at all. The Shedd aquarium, not as huge as some others I have been to, but definitely housing more variety was the last place of interest I visited in Chicago. Some fishes really seemed to like me, or they were just curious.
I left Chicago not just with some souvenirs that adorn the fridge and my office table, but with beautiful memories and a special something that would take me back again.