"My Kind of Town"

Chicago was more or less a whim.  

After lunch on Saturday we boarded the Southshore Train Line bound for Chicago.  Prior to this moment, Hub and I had both cherished romanticized notions about train riding fueled by Little House on the Prairie and Agathe Christie.  Unfortunately, these old fashioned train experiences are not so much the same now.  Hub described it to a friend as being “a lot like super long bus ride with more comfortable seats.”  It was fun to ride for the experience though.  

When we got to Chicago, it was pouring rain.  Something that delighted me more than it probably should have as we have not had rain in quite a while.  We stood under shelter determining which would be more fun: wetness or holing up somewhere.  Before we could decide, the rain stopped and we began to wander.  We wandered around the magnificent mile and the loop before finding a riverwalk where there were less tourists and more pretty sites.  Midway through our walk we found the Chicago River Museum, who knew such a thing even existed?  Such opportunities cannot be passed up and so we explored our way through this low-budget museum explaining the history of the Chicago River.  It was actually awesome.  For instance: did you know they reversed the flow and changed the mouth of the Chicago River?  Or that at one point in the 19^th century, the river was so polluted it caught on fire and burned for over 24 hours?  Or that Chicago itself was sort of a gamble as it was mostly wetlands at the start?  Or that there are four types of lifting bridges to let traffic down the Chicago River?  Not bad for a tiny museum.  To top it off we ambled down through the bowels of one of these bridges to see massive cogs and pullies.  Very cool. 

And what is a trip to Chicago without a slice of deep dish pizza?  We hadn’t been to Giordano’s yet, and so we set forth to try their massively cheesy pizza.  It was massively cheesy; and also massively delicious.  Well worth the wait and the walk.   The one disappointing factor of this trip was that upon further research we found out that deep-dish Chicago style pizza is actually fairly recent phenomenon with no story to speak of behind its birth.  We had fantasized that there must have been some very Italian Mafia-esc reason behind filling a pizza with schtuff.  Not so.  Some man, decided it would be a good idea and it took off.  Or so says the internet.   

We left tired and with a carefully honed list of what looks worthwhile in Chicago.  We can’t wait to explore some more!

museum of modern art at the Chicago Art Institute