Chicago- Monday, June 26, 2017

     We got up a little slower today and got a much later start, but that seemed to get us past rush hour anyway.  We had hotel breakfast and made our way to Navy Pier again, partly because we knew where to park there, but mostly because it was a convenient place to make a "home base" for the rest of the day.

     Our virtual Go Chicago cards had a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour for one day, and we planned today around using that as transportation to some locations that were further removed from that area.  The bus tour company is the Big Bus company.  There is another tour company that runs a similar hop-on-hop-off tour with similar buses, and they might be good to, but we can say that we really liked the Big Bus company.  They had a team of people that were not only on the buses, but were also easy to find at each of the stops.  They made finding our way to and from the bus quite simple.  The guides on the buses themselves were all good.  We had a couple during the day.  The first guy was ok, but his humor was a little strained.  We had one guy for a short time that was excited to learn that we were from Cheektowaga because he was originally from there too.  But the last guy we had was probably the best.  They all seemed knowledgeable, but the last guy peppered has rapid-fire talking with many impressions.  Some were quite good, though Scott thought his impression of Donald Trump sounded more like an impression of Alec Baldwin doing his impression of Donald Trump.   We had him for the longest time though, and we did enjoy listening to him.  All-in-all, the hop-on-hop-off bus option was well worth it today and seems like it was a good decision.

     Our tour took us by the Water Tower which was built in 1869.  The castle-like stone tower was one of the only buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which managed to burn down an estimated 18,000 wooden buildings in the city.  That bus stopped there, but we continued on it to the John Hancock Center.  The Hancock Center is easy to pick out from the rest of the skyline because it is more of a trapezoid than a rectangle and has twin antennae on top of it.  The observation deck there is called "360 Chicago."  This observation deck is 94 floors up, or 1,030 feet above the street.  Our Go Chicago tickets covered the admission to here, and we had an enjoyable time looking out at the city from above.   We took time for pictures, and picked out many of the places that we knew from yesterday.  Anna and Emma payed a few dollars extra to experience a ride called "TILT."  It has visitors lean against a window, and then uses hydraulics to tilt the window itself outward from the building, so you're looking down at the city below.  The girls enjoyed it, but didn't seem too panicked by it.  Julie and Scott were content to take pictures of them on it instead of trying it themselves.

     For lunch, the guide (the one from Cheektowaga) pointed out the place for the best Chicago style hot dogs- Portillo's Hot Dogs, which shares a building with Barnelli's Pasta Bowl.  The building was at the Hard Rock Cafe stop and across the street from the stylish looking McDonald's that Julie had picked out from the Hancock building.  Julie and Scott both had a hot dog, but Emma wants it to be noted for the record that they did not eat real Chicago hot dogs.  A real Chicagoan does not eat a hot dog with ketchup, but we specifically ordered ours with it.  Furthermore, a real Chicago hot dog has, among other things, sliced tomatoes, chopped onions, neon green relish, sport peppers, a pickle, and celery salt , all on a poppy seed bun.  Well, ours had mustard and the poppy seeds, but we weren't ready for all of the rest of the "true Chicago" toppings.  But then Emma can't judge us too harshly because she had a lasagna here and Anna had some spicy penne pasta.   The building itself had a strong "Old Chicago" decor, with Prohibition Era jazz playing, an old car with "repeal" license plates, and sports memorabilia and mannequins around the ceiling.   It was a little confusing because there were a couple of different lines for things, and since it was lunch time it was also crowded and noisy, but it was a fun stop.

     After lunch, we caught the next bus and got off again at the next stop- "Fort Dearborn."  This fort has long since vanished, but it was the birthplace of Chicago and here during the War of 1812.  Now, the site sits in the heart of downtown, right across the river from Trump Tower.  Scott got some pictures of the plaques and markers here, including one to LaSalle who passed through Western New York to here on his way to the Mississippi River in 1681.  We had some nice views of the Chicago River, which we had ridden on last night.  Then we crossed the bridge to the Wrigley Building.  The guide last night had said that the building had been built using his chewing gum... money.   The most popular part of it now is probably the Ghirardelli chocolate store that gives out free samples, which the girls enjoyed.  We were also pretty amazed to see a giant statue of Abraham Lincoln talking to a modern man in a white sweater.  We have grown used to seeing the odd pair in Gettysburg, where they are life-sized, but this version of them is gigantic of these two, 25 feet tall.

     We continued on the bus to the Willis/Sears Tower, where once again our Go Chicago passes let us skip lines and gained us admission to the SkyDeck here.  This observation level is 103 floors up, and is 1,353 feet above street level.  It's also pretty crowded compared to 360 Chicago at the Hancock Center, though that may also be affected by how much later in the day we were here.  This time, the girls wanted to get to the "SkyDeck Ledge"-- the small cubicles with glass bottomed floors that just out from near the top.  We had seen them from the river below yesterday, and the girls wanted to try them out themselves today.  Unfortunately, so did everybody else who was up there, it seemed.  That was made worse by the fact that there really didn't seem to be lines waiting for them, inspite of the fact that there were ropes to suggest it.  Small gaggles of people pushed there way forward slowly, and we certainly spent far longer waiting for our turn there then we did doing anything else on the observation deck.  Of course, the girls were fearless and walked right out onto the plexiglass to take pictures.  Scott did too.  Julie didn't, but tried to take pictures of us while we were there.

     When she was here a few years ago, Julie had gone to both the observation decks, but couldn't remember which she liked better.  Looking back on it now, she seems to think that the one at the Hancock Center was more enjoyable then the one at the Willis/Sears Tower because it was less crowded, and you ended up seeing more because of that.  We seemed to agree with that opinion today.

    While we were on our way to the Willis Tower, the guide on the bus pointed out a spot that Scott had been watching for.  It was used as "Gotham City" in the Dark Knight movie, and is where Batman chased down the Joker.  The building was the art deco Chicago Board of Trade building framed in the canyon at the foot of South LaSalle Street.  He really wanted a better picture of it, and he and Anna went back to take some while Julie and Emma sat in a park across from the Willis Tower.

     When we got back on the bus, we took the rest of the meandering tour and listened to the guide tell his stories.  We made note of a few things that we might do tomorrow.  We had hoped to get to the Adler Planetarium for our last afternoon stop, but we were just a little late for its last admission time.  In spite of that, we enjoyed the ride.  We heard stories about the Art Institute of Chicago, Buckingham Fountain, Grant Park (Chicago's "Front Lawn") and many other Chicago landmarks.  We heard many sobriquets for Soldier Field, the home of the Chicago Bears, including the "Mistake on the Lake" and the "Eye Sore on the Lake Shore."  The new stadium looks like a UFO crashed on it, and the renovations caused the old stadium to loose its landmark status in 2004.

    We left the bus tour where we had started, at Navy Pier.  Yesterday, it had been too crowded to have dinner at Giordanos there, but today we were able to try their version of the deep-dish Chicago pizza.  The menu itself says that customers should expect it to take a while to cook, but it did seem to take a long while.  When it finally came, the girls got to try some for the first time.  Of course, the pizza seems like it is built upside-down to us, with the sauce on the top and the meat on the bottom.  There is a lot of cheese, and a pie-like crust.   The slices were so thick that a large pizza was too much for the four of us.  The girls each had a slice and Scott had three, but we still had almost half of a pizza to take back to the hotel.  Scott and Anna ran it to the car.  Julie and Anna then both bought some warmer clothes because the "Windy City" was proving to have a pretty chilly breeze tonight.

       Again, we used our Go Chicago card to get boat tickets.  This time, we took the Lake tour from Shoreline Sightseeing.  As the name suggests, it took us out into Lake Michigan for a view of the skyline.  We had a little time to kill before the boat left, so we used our tickets from yesterday to ride the Centennial Ferris Wheel once more.   When we were on the boat, Julie got a look at the statue of  Bob Newhart on the end of Navy Pier as we went past it.  We went out towards the lighthouse that we had admired yesterday, and we got close to it but didn't past it.  The boat first sailed south and then north again, to show off the most interesting sections of the skyline.  The sun was going down behind the buildings of the skyline, and we were all taking interesting looking pictures because of that lighting.  The girls seemed to be really enjoying themselves in spite of the fact that it was getting chilly.  Julie seemed content to see her family so happy and said this is why she put up with the crazy things she has to do at work, so we can enjoy moments together like this one.

    On our way back to the hotel, we found our way onto Lower Wacker Drive.  This tunnel-like street was featured in movies like The Blues Brothers and The Dark Knight and Scott thought it was great fun to ride on.  It ended up taking us the direction we wanted to go anyway, towards the west and our hotel in Lombard.