It’s important as a great travel writer to be accurate with any geographic references used. That’s why as a mediocre travel writer I didn’t discover, until I was 103 storeys above Chicago, that the vast body of water adjacent to the city is, in fact, Lake Michigan, not Lake Ontario as posted previously. Michigan, Ontario whatever. It’s huge and wet, right?
I have no idea where Ontario came from but it’s likely to be a song by Neil Young, “Helpless”. It’s interesting now that I’m travelling more later in life, that song references keep flashing back out of the moth-ridden archives of my brain. For instance, we were in the exquisite Chicago Art Institute yesterday and we were looking at some paintings by Georgia O’Keefe. The cogs in my brain were working overtime as they recognised the name, and after looking at 4 or 5 more paintings I suddenly yelled out, “Warren Zevon! He mentioned her in a song.” Lynda replied, “That’s nice dear.”
Anyway, we started yesterday by patiently waiting two hours to reach the top of the Willis Building. Can I suggest if you are visiting Chicago and you want to do this, get there early? It’s something that you should do if visiting Chicago but don’t let it interfere with the rest of your stay. The view is to die for but the facilities and size of the viewing platform is a bit dated. They seem to have focused more on putting in three of those glass platforms like the Eureka Building rather than upgrading anything else. The glass platforms are great but every man and his dog was queuing up for them, hence the bottle neck downstairs.
After finally getting downstairs we had our second Chicago hotdog in two days. I’ll see if I can remember what’s in them. A hotdog clearly, tomato, relish, finely chopped onion, two mild whole green chilli’s, mustard, a long pickle and celery salt. It won’t be the last Chicago hot dog I’ll partake in before we go.
The Chicago Arts Institute has claims to be the best in the world. That will always be debatable depending on one’s taste but it is seriously impressive by anyone’s standards. We only had 3 hours and we barely touched the sides. So much to see including an exhibition by photographer Robert Frank who did the album art for the Stone’s Exile on Main St. Apologies for so many photos below but it’s mainly for my own benefit to look back on when I’m old and senile. We had to get through pretty quick. We are off to two festivals today so should be fun. Hope all is well. Saints got done again. Might put that thought back with Georgia O’Keefe and move forward.
