Cruisin Through The City

One activity that all three of us had been dying to do in Chicago, was take an architectural boat tour down the middle of the city.  So, that is they very first thing we did when we woke up on our first full day in the city!  The walk down to the river was beautiful in the morning sunshine.  Chicago is such a clean, classy place.

I loved the juxstaposition of the classical Greek architecture next to the sleek, streamline architecture of the very modern Trump building

We cruised with Chicago's First Lady, Chicago's finest fleet

It was the most perfect day for a ride down the river.  The sun was shinning, the sky was blue and we were so excited to be there!

Darn that man and his ginormous white hat, it's going to be burned in my memories forever

It was fascinating to see and learn about all the various kinds of architecture that makes up Chicago's skyline.  Art deco is probably the most prominent, which I love, it is such a classy style.  But there is also tons of modern designs, Greek revival designs etc.

I thought these two apartment buildings were interesting, even though they may look dated to some of you.  The designer wanted these building to look like trees with the centers to be the trunks, the rooms to be the branches, and the balconies to be the leaves but in a stylized way.  I think he achieved his goal.

This is a classic art deco design, it's called an arm chair design because it obviously looks like an armchair

I loved the art deco details on this facade

Going under a draw bridge!

I loved the Chevron exoskeleton on the building on the left

Yes, my mom and dad were on the cruise as well.  It wasn't just me taking pictures of myself by myself haha

Sears Tower, the tallest building in North America.  And we got to go to the top of it .. at night!  Pictures of that to come...!

Notice the building with the golden top?  That is now the Hard Rock Hotel, and the designer said that the top was meant to look like a bottle of campaign.

The tour ended with a bang by giving us wonderful views of the entire skyline

After our wonderful little cruise, we started heading in the direction of Navy Pier.  We passed by a lot of amazing buildings on our way.  I am just so impressed with Chicago and it's beautiful atmosphere, it's amazing and unique buildings and the lovely weather it provided for us!

We quickly became interested and curious about this building that had pieces from different famous buildings from around the world built directly into it's walls.  We found bits and pieces of everything from the Parthenon in Greece to the White House to the Duomo Cathedral in Florence to the great Egyptian pyramids!  We closely inspected three of it's four walls and had fun looking at all the places that were represented.

One wall was dedicated to representing each of the 50 united states of America, and had a stone from some landmark that is famous from each state.  It took us a while to find Utah and were starting to think that it wasn't cool enough for Chicago.  But we eventually found it!  It was one of the very last ones.  I was surprised that they chose a stone from the temple as our landmark, for a lot of other states they took things from national parks, so I was expecting something from Moab or Zions or something along those lines.  But how cool that they chose the temple to represent our great state!

Arriving in The Windy City

This month I had the most fabulous opportunity to travel to Chicago and Michigan with my wonderful parents!  We signed up for a Tauk tour in Michigan and decided to tack on a few days to explore Chicago on our own before meeting up with the tour.  That town kept us busy every second of every day and I loved it to pieces!  The minute we had checked into our hotel my dad wanted to get out to explore!  So, he took me to see the bean, one of the things I was most excited to see!  Our hotel was only a short 5 minute walk away from the fantastic sculpture.

My first view of the bean!!

As you will soon figure out by the millions of pictures I posted, I was OBSESSED with the bean!!  I couldn't stop taking pictures of it, every angle gave you a completely different view of the city either inside or outside the bean!  So... please don't get bored of bean pictures, they are all cool!

The city behind the bean ....

The city inside the bean ....

Then I went underneath the bean and was blown away by how awesome it continued to be ...

can you see all the different Kates and Craigs in this picture ...

I don't think my dad was quite ready for this pic, but oh well, I am posting it anyway!

After hanging out with the bean all afternoon.  We went back to the hotel and got all cleaned up and picked up mom and headed to dinner.  Mom and dad had been to The Berghoff German restaurant last time they were in Chicago and were excited to take me there, so that is where we dined tonight!

Our little weekend get away happened to fall right in the middle of Chicago's Oktoberfest!  Lucky us! haha they had concerts every night in the plaza and of course Berghoff was all decked out in it's Oktoberfest's best.  They even had a special menu!  All of used ordered their special home brewed root beer to celebrate the holiday.

Anytime I am at an authentic German restaurant, I have to order the wienerschnitzel, it is my favorite German dish!  Luckily, it was on their special Oktoberfest menu, and it was delicious!

I loved the fun, colorful stained glass that lit up half the restaurant

The other walls had pictures from all the old world fairs that happened all over the world!  I am enchanted with all the fascinating things that happened during and were built for these world's fairs, so I loved looking at all the fun, vintage photographs!

The first time Chicago hosted the world's fair, they invented the ferris wheel as their main attraction, so they had plenty of pictures of the world's first Ferris wheel, which were fun to see

After dinner, we all walked back over to the bean to see what it looked like at night!  These cool blue lights were set up all up and down the streets of downtown as an art instillation and I thought they were soooo cool!

The park at night

Of course, the bean was totally awesome at night!  It was also raining, which added another cool element to viewing  this one of a kind sculpture.

After getting soaked in the freezing rain, we stopped in The Corner Bakery to get some hot chocolate and dessert before heading home.  It was the perfect little treat to end such a fun day traveling in this amazing city!

I got hazelnut hot chocolate that came with whipped cream and was dusted with cinnamon, can you say delicious?!  Many more trip posts to come, so please check back to see the other fun things we did!