Day 3 – Wednesday, August 5
Time to continue my adventures with Wednesday. Today was an unusual day for me, prior to getting to Chicago I didn’t have anything fully planned out to do, you know – maybe be a bit spontaneous! For those of you who know me well, you are aware that this isn’t like me at all, but I wanted to leave some open time so I could adjust plans depending on if I could meet up with a few friends I haven’t seen in awhile that are in the area. And that is how the day started.
My friend Jamie and I met at Riverwalk Theatre doing a few shows together – Animal Crackers and Dreamgirls. Shortly after that she moved to the Chicago area and I haven’t seen her since. We’ve kept in touch on Facebook, but hadn’t seen each other in person for probably about 10 years!
Today was back to using the CTA to get around Chicago – I love the system and it is simple to use and saves headaches trying to drive and find and pay for parking! I headed to the Lincoln Square area to meet up with Jamie for lunch. I got there a little early so walked around and we decided to meet by this fountain in Lincoln Square. They also had a Lombard Lamp that I decided to take a picture of while I was waiting. Soon she and her adorable son arrived and after waiting for her son to run around a bit and throw a coin into the fountain and make a wish, we headed off to lunch.
Jamie knew of a Mexican restaurant nearby and so that is where we had lunch. So we went for a nice lunch at Garcia’s Restaurant. Just chatting, catching up a bit, listening to her son tell many stories, and getting a few tips for things to do in Chicago and a better parking idea for MSI (coming on Friday). Always nice to have lunch with a friend with no real timelines to rush off to. Although, they did have somewhere to get to for the afternoon, but had plenty of time. After we finished lunch, it was off to catch the CTA for both of us. We had a quick goodbye as the bus they were taking was there and it doesn’t run that often, so they wanted to catch it when they could. I caught an ‘L’ and headed downtown Chicago for the next adventures of my day.
My next stop was the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Although when I got off the ‘L’ I ended up in the Merchandise Mart, so since I wasn’t on a tight schedule, I wandered around there for awhile, before heading outside, getting my bearings, and going to the museum. Finding my way around Chicago is a bit tricky at times when not all the street corners have signs and with all the tall buildings, GPS doesn’t always get a good fix on my position, so I get turned around sometimes.
On entering the museum I got good news and bad news. The good news was that on that day they were offering free entry, the bad news is that only one of the floors was open for the day. I think they might have been setting up for a special event on the other floor. So I just took my time looking around the museum. They had lots of signs about the history of the different types of TV shows – drama, variety, music, talk shows, etc. The special exhibit currently was about advertising TV icons. It was neat to be able to read about the history and see how these advertising icons have changed over the years. They also had some videos of old TV ads. The other major display area on this floor was about the history of Chicago children’s shows and the various performers (both real and puppet variety) that were in the shows. They had some set pieces from different shows like Meet the Press and some props and scripts from a variety of shows. I just looked around nice and slow since I had time to kill and wasn’t in a rush.
After I got done with the museum I decided just to walk around a bit and look around. I was right near Michigan Ave. so decided to walk along the Magnificent Mile. I’m not overly interested in shopping and most of the stores I saw were what you’d find in a regular mall, so didn’t go in any stores. I did find these two nice flower gardens along the road where they also had bird houses hanging. I thought that was a nice touch in a busy city. Speaking of nice things to look at – it was right around 5 when I was walking around, so I’m guessing they do this around rush hour to just have a presence visible and ready, not sure the exact reason, but there were 3-4 police officers every few blocks just standing around. And some of them were quite nice to look at.
My next stop for the day was to Eataly, a place that Jamie recommended. It is a 2 story large store/restaurant place, all devoted to Italian items and food. The store has many items from kitchen gadgets to chocolate and wine, fresh produce and dairy, pasta and beer. They have several eating stations (sort of like a food court) where they had gelato, a Nutella bar, wine, pasta, and pizza. I had dinner here with some good pasta, sitting right by where they make the pizzas in a wood burning oven. It was nice to have dinner and a show! I bought a bottle of wine and some chocolates and then had some gelato for dessert. Since it was two floors, they had an escalator and a very helpful sign about what to be careful of wearing on the escalator.
I still had some time before my scheduled evening activity (which I had only booked that morning – about as spontaneous as I get!) so I just walked around some more. I was right by the Chicago river, so walked along the river paths they have. Very nice area, but in order to cross the river you need to get back up to street level to cross, and they don’t have stairs at every road, so I ended up walking a lot more than I had planned, but still was a nice way to see a bit more of the city and get some exercise in!
My last activity for the day was to go on a boat tour. The main boat tours that Wendella Boats offers are architectural tours, but this was a combination tour. We did get most of the architectural part of the tour, including the history of many of the buildings, the history of the Chicago river, how they reversed the flow of the river, lawsuits that came after they reversed the flow, and how a loophole in the wording of some laws allowed some buildings to be built on the lake side of Lake Shore Drive. Hint – land isn’t the same as ground that was built from landfill! The picture to the left is a rarity – a selfie – I don’t often take them, but decided to take one to prove that I really was in Chicago! After we got out into Lake Michigan and toured up and down the coast a bit looking at more buildings and hearing more history, I decided to head down to the lower level of the boat to have a glass of wine. But first, backing up a little.
While waiting in line to get on the boat I started talking to the people in line next to me, and the guy was mentioning how he keeps trying to get free things by complaining about things not being perfect or what not – but he is never successful. So when I go down to get my wine, I see you can buy souvenir wine glasses as well, so I decide to get one. The lady working couldn’t find any and decided they must not have any on board, so she gave me my glass of wine for free. I had to tell the guy who was in line next to me about my free glass of wine that I got without even trying! Also, during the break from the narration on the tour, I went to talk to the tour guide. During the narration he shared the story of how they had to use tanker cars on a train to bring salt water from Florida up to the aquarium when they building it. I wanted to see if he knew how they now get salt water for the aquarium. I knew this from my visit to Shedd two years ago, so wondered if he knew as well. He didn’t, so I got to teach the tour guide something!
The other part of the tour that I went for was to watch the Navy Pier fireworks from Lake Michigan. This was a special treat to be able to watch a nice fireworks show with the lights of Chicago in the background. After the fireworks were done, we heading back through the lock at the mouth of the Chicago River, had a bit more information about the architect of Chicago, and then disembarked. You can see all the pictures from my boat tour on Facebook. I then hopped on the Blue Line to head back to my car and hotel, and that was day 3.