Chicago Travelogue What an incredible city!→[More:]

So I had a workshop to attend for my job, and used it as an excuse to take an extra couple days and tour the city. I was quite efficient! In just a few days I walked miles around Oak Park looking at houses, went to the History Museum, the Stained Glass Museum, the Field Museum, and the Art Institute; hung out in Milennium Park; walked along the beach and the lake shore biking path; checked out the Navy Pier; took a self-guided tour of the Marshall Fields' store; checked out the historic Palmer hotel; went to a Unitarian service at Frank Lloyd Wright's UNity Temple and visited his Oak Park home & studio; tried a Chicago hot dog (excellent!) and a deep dish pie (meh), checked out the Tribune building and the Magnificent Mile, and splashed around in the Crown Fountain.

It was a startlingly beautiful city. All I know of Chicago had come from American Studies stuff -- Sandburg, the Jungle, the '68 convention - I always pictured it as gritty, industrial, full of strife. Instead I found a really vibrant, sophisticated, diverse city full of graces: the architecture has to be America's finest in one city center. The public parks and gardens and plantings are like gems everywhere, and people really use them.

Culturally, I found that people were almost a combination of Midwestern (nice, polite, helpful) and Southern (I haven't been 'Ma'am'-ed so much in years, and people were laid back and had a relaxed pace). Perhaps some of the Southern feel can be accounted for by the Great Migration, but who knows.

I'd go back at the flimsiest excuse, this time exploring more of the outlying neighborhoods. Those of you who live there are fortunate folk!