I was actually 10 minutes late for my tour, but luckily they were still outside the building. I missed the tour guide’s spiel about the building, but that is okay. I wasn’t the only one late. Another couple was late, and called the tour guide to find out the next place they were meeting. It was funny because they were walking right in front of the tour guide. The guide said something, and the guy that was late repeated the same thing to his wife/girlfriend. The tour guide caught on and they joined our group. Our next stop was the “L” train, which is Chicago’s public transportation. Our guide told us that several years ago Chicago did a study to see how much it would cost to move the public transportation under ground. They study found that it would cost millions of dollars, and the U.S. was in the middle of a recession and the city was bankrupted. So instead, Chicago made the transportation system a historic landmark, meaning it could never be torn down. The one we were looking at had just been restored to what it originally looked liked 40 years ago. Chicago plans to restore the rest of the platforms in the future. Our next stop was the Chicago Board of Trade was designed in the Art Deco style. It is in the art deco style because of the vertical lines and the building set-back. Back in the day, people brought their goods to trade here. It still functions as a stock exchange in Chicago. We continued along and our guide told us about how the standard time system originated in Chicago. In 1883, railroads were the main method of travel for people and goods. The problem was that the time in Chicago was different than the time in California where goods and people were being delivered. During this time, the time was determined by the position of the sun, with high noon the only existing standard of exact local time. So there were hundreds of time systems. So the railroads developed the time system of using 4 time zones across the country, with each 1 hour ahead of the zone to its west. All railroad clocks in each zone were to be synchronized to strike the hour simultaneously. The federal government, states, and offices began to use the same system almost immediately. On March 19, 1918, Congress formally acknowledged the plan by passing the Standard Time Act. We also passed by the Chicago jail, which is a triangle building in downtown in the brutalist style. It was deliberately designed this way. That way there were fewer corners and guards could stand in the 3 corners and see the whole floor. The windows are narrow slats. Originally there were not bars on the windows because they thought no one would be able to squeeze through them. But a prisoner almost escaped that way (he was caught on the way down), so bars were added to the windows. I was really surprised about the lack of barbed wire, but I guess the building works for them.
After the museum I was starving (it was after 3 p.m.) so I went to Uno, which my tour guide yesterday said was the first place that served the deep dish pizza. I wanted to try it, so I ordered a barbeque chicken deep dish pizza. It was interesting. I was expecting barbeque sauce and chicken, which was the top layer, but under that was another layer with tomato sauce and more cheese. Tomato sauce and barbeque sauce do not really go together. But I was starving, so I ate it all.
It was only a 30 minute tour, so it ended at about 5:30. I had seen everything that I wanted to see, so I went back to the hotel to get my rental. Then I drove to the Oakbrook Marriott. This is where we were staying for government training. I got checked in, and then went to my room to rest my feet and get some sleep. I was beat. Tomorrow I will return my car and then focus on the training classes.
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I set my alarm to wake me up at 3 a.m., because I had a plan. My plane left at 7:35 a.m., so I had to be at the airport at 5:30 a.m. I also had to stop by my new house to drop off curtain rods because Mom and Joe drove up to meet the A/C guy, and this would be the perfect time for Joe to install them for me. So I figured 30 minutes to drive from my new house to the airport, 30 minutes unloading stuff for my new house, and 30 minutes driving from my apartment to my new house. That means I had to leave my apartment by 4 a.m., so I set my alarm for 3 so I would have time to wake up, pack some things, and maybe be a little early. That didn’t happen. My alarm went off at 3 a.m., and every 5-10 minutes after that, but I kept turning it off, until I finally woke up enough to actually look at my alarm, which was at 3:45 a.m. I immediately jump up and start getting ready, because I was 45 minutes behind schedule. Luckily I had packed and laid out my clothes the night before, so getting ready didn’t take long. I had also packed a box to take to my new house with stuff from my desk, so I put that on my office chair and rolled it out to my car. Then I went back to my apartment, got my stuff and left at 5:05. So now I was only running 5 minutes behind schedule. I got to my new house, everything was good. I unloaded my one box and the curtain rods. I wasn’t being very quiet, but Mom and Joe slept through it all. I didn’t want to wake them up, so I left right afterwards. Then I drove to the Love Field Airport. Right when I was turning in, Mom texted asking if I was still stopping by. She couldn’t believe that I came and dropped stuff off and they didn’t hear me. I got through security, got some breakfast, and waited on my plane. We left for Chicago on time and landed just after 10 a.m. Then I took a shuttle to the rental car place. The girl at the desk was not helpful. I asked if I could drop off at another location, and she said I could. When I was reserving the car it wouldn’t let me choose the drop-off location right by my hotel in Oak Brook, so I just let it default to Napersville. She tried to change it, but it wouldn’t let her. She said it was probably closed. So I asked if I could turn in my car at 5 p.m., she put that in and said it was still closed. I asked what time they were open and she said she didn’t know and I should try googling it. So I googled it on my phone, saw they were closed on Sunday, so I said I would turn in my car at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. She told me where to pick up my car and I left. I would think there would be a way for employees to look up when different locations are open instead of the customer having to google it on their phones, but that is just me. I drove to Chicago, which took over an hour because of construction and I kept making wrong turns. Those streets are confusing. I finally made it to the Double Tree and got checked in. I like the Double Tree, when you check in they give you a chocolate chip cookie. They also let me check in a lot earlier then I was supposed to, usual check in is at 3 p.m. and I checked in around 11 a.m. I dropped my stuff off in my room. My phone was only about 30% charged, so I plugged in my charger. It didn’t work. For some reason, my phone charger chose this moment to crap out. I kept trying, but I finally accepted that it wasn’t going to charge. So I looked up a convenience store and saw it was only a couple of blocks away, so I walked to 7-Eleven and bought a new phone charger. Then I got back to my room and noticed that it was a car charger and could not be plugged into a wall. So I went back downstairs to the gift shop (which I noticed on my way up), and they did have an iPhone 6 wall charger. So I bought another charger. This is the 4th charger I have bought in 3 days (the other 2 where in Temple, TX: the first one didn’t work, and the other did). Finally my phone started charging, and I had to wait until it recharged enough that I didn’t have to worry about it. While I was waiting for my phone to charge, I got on my iPad and starting researching things to do and see. I found out about the Chicago Explorer pass, which allows people to get in to some of Chicago’s top attractions for a reduced rate. I bought the pass for 5 sites for $109. This is actually cheaper than going to the attraction and paying there. Each of the ones I wanted to go to was at least $20 each, and 2 were $35. So I’m actually saving money by buying the pass. After all this research my phone was finally at 70%, and I decided that was good enough. I unplugged my phone and went to explore Chicago. I wanted to do a boat tour so I rushed down to Navy Pier to try to make the 2 p.m. boat. It was further than I expected and I was late. I also got slightly lost when I was going over there, so that didn’t help. I missed the boat, and I didn’t want to wait for the next one. They came every 30 minutes, and the trip was 40 minutes. I didn’t think I would have enough time to do the tour and then rush over to the Wrigley Building to meet my tour guide for the 3 p.m. Magnificent Mile free walking tour.
After enjoying the views on the pier for a while, I hurried to go to the Wrigley Building for the tour. I made in exactly on time and found my tour director, Michael. While he was looking to make sure no one was looking for him, I ran to the Giardelli shop and got a brownie for lunch. I didn’t have time to stop to eat and I was hungry. Then I went outside and joined the tour. Michael told us about the Wrigley Building. It was started by Wrigley, whose father was a soap maker. He came to Chicago to sell soap. He offered stores a deal: If they bought 3 bars of soap to sell, he would include a free box of baking soda. The baking soda was selling better than the soap, so he switched to selling baking soda and offered a different deal. If the stores sold his baking soda, he threw in a couple of packs of gum for free. The gum started selling better than the baking soda, so he switched industries again, and the rest is history. He made fortune selling Wrigley gum. The building itself is also interesting because it is white, which his crazy considering the amount of pollution in Chicago. To combat this, the outside of the building is covered with ceramic tiles that have a glaze on it. The pollution gets on the tiles, but every time it rains the pollution washes off. So it is a self-cleaning building, which is cool. We also went to another building, which I don’t remember the name of. It is a building that has pieces of other buildings in it. Back when the U.S. was politically isolationist, which means they were not meddling in international affairs, news stations were still reporting worldwide events. The news stations sent out reporters who reported from fascinating places, and the news channel wanted to bring back some of these exotic places, so they asked reporters to bring back pieces of these buildings. There was no international court at this time, so it wasn’t technically illegal to steal pieces of the buildings. So they have stones from the Parthenon and a lot of other places. Michael also told us that a previous guest on one of his tours could read Chinese and wanted to know why there was a tombstone on the wall. Our next stop was a statue of Benito Juarez, who was a famous president of Mexico. The Mexican government gave the city of Chicago the statue. The city of Chicago built a plaza for the statue. It was nice, and had the flags of each nation in the Americas surrounding the statue. Our tour guide didn’t know why the plaza was built, but one of the tour attendees was from Mexico and said that he exchanged letters with President Lincoln, who was from Illinois. Illinois is known as the Land of Lincoln. So we think that is why President Juarez has his own plaza.
We also passed by Allerton Hotel, which caused quite a scandal when it was opened because it has a co-ed health club. The men and women had separate floors, but they were in the same building. Scandal! But our guide told us that he actually had a couple that had been married for 60 years that met at the Allerton. Another stop was the water tower, which some believe is the oldest building in Chicago. It is not actually the oldest building. In 1871 Chicago had the Great Fire. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow supposedly knocked over a lantern and started the fire while Chicago was in the middle of a draught. They don’t know if this really happened or if the Irish was blamed because there was a lot of anti-Irish sentiment going on at the time. But almost all of Chicago burned. At the time, almost all of the building in Chicago were made of wood. The sidewalks were made with wood and covered with a water resistant substance which was highly flammable. The citizens fled the fire and when it finally stopped, the water tower was left because it was made of limestone. There were other buildings left, but the water tower was the tallest and the people could see it from where they fled. It gave them hope because not everything was destroyed, and the water tower became a symbol of rebuilding Chicago. When Chicago was widening the streets, they laid the streets in perfectly straight lines and if a building was in the way they destroyed the building. They made an exception for the water tower, and curved the street around the tower. We passed by the John Hancock Building, which is unique because it has a steel exterior exoskeleton, instead of the exoskeleton being hidden inside the building. When the exoskeleton is inside the building, it ends up making smaller rooms, but with it being outside that is no longer a problem. We saw a few more sights along Michigan Avenue. The Magnificent Mile is a mile long shopping district along Michigan Avenue. These are shops like Prada, Lamborghini, etc. There was also more reasonably priced stores like Victoria’s Secret, Zara, etc. Our tour guide was not a big shopper so he mostly just showed us where the stores were instead of focusing on that for our tour, which I was fine with since I wasn’t here to shop. He also pointed out places to eat and told us local stories along the way.
After I took my pictures, I bought the pictures they took and then walked back to my hotel and went to bed.
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June 2022
AuthorThese are details from my adventures around the world. |