Sunday, September 2, 2012

Weekend In Chicago Day 3-Part 2

The Beach, The Fountain, and The Bean

With our tour of the Alder Planetarium at an end we had one more thing to do before we left the Museum Campus area for the last time. 

The picture below is a reminder that the planetarium was right next to the shores of Lake Michigan.



Among the few requests my wife made in regard to activities on our trip was that she wanted to take a walk on the beach. 

She qualified her request with the words "in the morning". But as you have read in previous posts our mornings were spent "sleeping in". A morning walk on one of the many lake front beaches wasn't going to happen. 

But now we found ourselves standing in front of our car looking out at the lake on a beautiful warm pleasant summer afternoon. As an incurable romantic and someone who always tries my best to show my love to my wife, I knew that we could not leave that park without at least going down by the beach. I took her hand and we headed that way. 

As we made our way through the maze of sidewalks, we were passed by a group of tourists taking the Chicago Segway sightseeing tour. 

It looked like a lot of fun and doing it in Chicago would be really cool. I'll have to put it on my agenda for our next Windy City vacation.  

Our hand-in-hand stroll led us to the railing that separates the bike path and the sands of the beach front. 

We stood and looked at the water for a while. Then it was time to head on down to the beach.  

We walked to the end of the wooden walkway dusted with wind driven sand and looked out over the panoramic view of  the only Great Lake entirely within the US border. 



Although there were other people on this small section of beach they were far enough away to make us feel somewhat isolated. 


I don't believe Paula thought we were going to do anything but look at the water. She seemed at bit taken back when I asked her if she was ready to take our shoes off and head down onto the sand.

With no place to sit, we leaned on each other to take off our sneakers and socks. First thing we did was put our feet into the water. This was a little bit of a challenge. While the beach was sandy there was a section of small pebbles between the sand and the water. Getting into the water required walking across those small stones. 

But after treading softly we breached the surf with our pedial digits. I took this picture as proof of our adventure.


But the water covering our feet doesn't really show up that well in this shot. We couldn't walk out much deeper than we did because the bottom dropped off rather drastically but we couldn't see to what degree. We knew it was best to stay where we were. So I decided this event needed to be documented with a video. 


We got out of the water and stood on the beach to allow our feet to dry. Paula found a small stick and began to draw in the sand. She made something very sweet and romantic. 


As we stood there looking at her drawing we thought it more like "RIP" than "R+P". So she just below it she wrote this. 


Then, like any good artist, my wife signed and dated her creations. Here's a shot of her entire sand art gallery.


While we were playing in the sand we had a visitor; a seagull. He didn't come over just to be friendly. He wasn't a member of the Chicago Aviary Chamber of Commerce. He was after something in the sand we didn't know was there.  

His quest was finding and devouring several pieces of snack chips buried in the sand. He was persistent and fearless in the search for his lunch. He got as close two feet away from us in his foraging efforts. I named him "Chipper". 

Here's a picture that shows all the elements of our time on the beach: Paula's artwork, our sneakers and our seagull friend. 


Although it was just a few short minutes out of our day; I would have to say that those few minutes on the beach by Lake Michigan was the most romantic time of our entire trip. 

A short drive north from the Museum Campus on Columbus Avenue took us to our next tourist attraction. 

We parked along the street and paid for it using an automated box near where we parked. It was $5 for an hour. 

We walked into Grant Park to see something I'd seen on TV many times.








Buckingham Fountain is the opening shot of the beginning of the first successful sit-com ever on the Fox Television Network: Married With Children. 

Each episode begins with the instrumental introduction of the Frank Sinatra song "Love and Marriage" playing in the back ground. The fountain shoots up into the air. It's only for about 5 seconds but that's long enough to be memorable. 

I was really excited about seeing this fountain. I think it's cool to see things that I've seen in TV or movies in real life. 

We spent about 5 minutes in front of Buckingham Fountain. I could have stayed and watched the water show it puts on at the top of each hour but we had only about 45 minutes before we had to leave for the ballpark. We still had several "must see" things to find. 

Next on our sight seeing agenda Cloud Gate, Chicago's most popular public sculpture. It's nickname is "The Giant Bean" because of it's shape.

I thought Cloud Gate was a lot closer to Buckingham Fountain than it was. As it turned out it was in a totally different park. 

My 3rd navigational mistake of the trip (but who's counting?) was thinking that Grant Park and Millennium Park were the same.  At it turns out they are 2 blocks apart. 

Using Paula's I-Phone for help with directions to get to Millennium Park. Along the way we passed in front of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was featured in "Ferris Bueller". I took a picture of one of the bronze lions outside the museum's entrance. 



Although we didn't know it when we passed it on our way to Cloud Gate, this museum would play an unexpected part in our day.  

Just past the Art Institute was Millennium Park. In this park were two of Chicago's most unique tourist attractions. 

Crown Fountain is a black granite reflecting pool surrounded by benches. Although we didn't take a picture of the entire plaza I found one through a Google search. 


As you can see in at the far right and partially at the far left of this picture the fountain has a pair of 50 ft. tall transparent glass brick towers on either side of the reflecting pool. 

On the inside of these towers is a series of light-emitting diodes that can display digital video. Most of the time what's displayed on the towers are close ups of faces. The pictures are positioned so that it looks like the fountains are coming out of the mouths of the faces. 


Looking at Crown Fountain from the perspective of a tourist walking through the city it was a cool thing just to stand and watch. 

But being a kid at heart part of me really longed to, once again, take off my shoes, slosh through the water puddled on the granite surface and wait to be soaked by the stream coming from the tower. It would have been great fun. 

We watched the kids play in the fountain for a while but soon it was time to head on over to AT&T plaza and see Cloud Gate.  

The sculpture was given it's name by it's designer, artist Anish Kapoor. It was created to serve as a symbolic gate welcoming tourists into the city. 
  . 
Built on the roof of the Park Grill restaurant and resembling a gigantic bean shaped glob of liquid mercury, Cloud Gate is "you gotta see it to believe it" attraction. The 3 story high sculpture has a highly polished stainless steel surface with no visible seams. It reflects the Chicago skyline in a distorted and twisted way. 

You can see what I mean by looking at the sides of this sculpture in these pictures. 




If you look just to the right of the center of the picture below you'll see my camera flash. I was trying to capture the reflections of the people and places both in front of and behind me. 


As a tourist you can't resist looking for your own reflection and capturing it with your camera. 



You can also take advantage of the mirror effect to take a picture of yourself from both front and back at the same time. 


But just when you think you've looked at this magnificent sculpture from every angle possible you step underneath and look up. 

There you see a twenty seven foot high stainless steel kaleidoscopic panorama of the underbelly of the giant bean. The interior design provided the special effect; you just had to point your camera up and press the shutter. 

Paula and I appear 3 times in the picture below. If you look hard you can see us at the bottom at about the 4 o'clock mark from there look up toward 11 o'clock to see us again. In the center of the picture (a reverse angle reflection of the bottom of the picture) and you'll see us between 5 and 6 o'clock. 


You can spot us 4 times in this picture by looking for the reflection of my camera flash. Can you see us?


The giant bean is visually fascinating; almost hypnotizing. I could have spent an hour in the AT&T plaza not just looking at Cloud Gate but watching the tourists as they have fun finding themselves in the reflections.

But we didn't have time to stay very long. Our paid parking time was running out and we needed to leave for the baseball game. 

While in Millennium Park we realized that the route Paula's phone showed us was the best driving route and not the best walking route. We found we could have just walked straight up Columbus Avenue then over 1/2 block to the park. 

On our way back to the car I decided to take a walkway that looked to be a pedestrian bridge over a lot of the area traffic. It looked really cool and I thought that it would get us back to the car faster. But I was wrong.  

I later found out that the path we chose is "officially" called the Nicholas Bridgeway. It's intended to give tourists a direct way to go from Millennium Park, over top Monroe Avenue to the Modern Art wing of the Art Institute. 


We didn't find out about where the walkway ended until we got to the door of the Art Institute. We either went inside to see if we could find a way down to the street or walk back to the park and start over. 

I chose to walk through the door. But finding our way down to the street was not as easy as I thought it would be. We ended up asking a museum guard for directions, riding down 3 sets of escalators, and then having to ask a ticket counter attendant to point out the exit.  

Finally we made it back to the car with 5 minutes left on our parking time. It was a long walk and we were both tired and hot. 

Glad to be sitting down in the Impala we basked in coolness of the air conditioning for a few minutes. Then we said our "good byes" to downtown Chicago, programmed the GPS to take us to 35th street on the south side of the city, and headed for the ballpark. 























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