It’s been a learning kind of a day.

We caught the train into downtown Chicago. The first lesson was that you’re not allowed to take guns into the ticket office. Which, frankly, came as something of a relief since the second lesson was that there is a very hard to spot button on my bank’s app which you have to select in order to use your card abroad. That particular lesson meant we held up the queue for a while, so the first lesson…. yeah. Relief!

 

When the train arrived, it was a double decker.  Yup.  I BLOODY KNOW.  It was clearly sorcery.  But we sat upstairs and no ill befell us.

We arrived at Union Station and followed the crowd to an exit that spat us out at the Opera House, which is bloody spectacular, let me tell you.  The plan was to head for Navy Pier, hit up a cafe for a pancake-based brunch, take a boat tour, visit the bean and head for the Science Museum.

Our day went adrift at the first hurdle. Is that a consistent metaphor? I suspect not.  There has been wine…

Anyway.  Navy Pier, which reminded me of nothing so much as Blackpool Pier feeling a little end-of-season sorry for itself was fuckin’ enormous.  We spent quite a lot of time floating around looking for a pancake type diner.  You know in the movies and in pretty much every American TV show, the main character goes into a diner, virtually every morning, and orders brewed, stewed filter coffee and a stack.  Well, dear reader, hold on to your motherfuckin’ hat… it turns out that’s the stuff of fiction.  I KNOW!!! In reality, we could find hotdog stands, McDonalds and a fried chicken place.  Not a pancake bar anywhere here.  But… BUT….. We also learned that Breaking Bad is NOT a work of fiction.  Well.  It may be fiction in and of itself.  But the fried chicken place it features is pretty much alive and well and located on Navy Pier.  Apparently.  I haven’t seen the show, myself, but Tim tells me on good authority.

Anyway.  After a fried chicken sandwich – which was *far* better than it has any business to be; and *far* worse than my diet should allow – we got a boat tour of the architectural sites of the city.

The tour was amazing.  We saw Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and whole bunch of other architects I should be able to remember.  Unfortunately for the quality of this story, there are a *lot* of really exciting buildings in Chicago and there was a *super lot* of really good information from the guide and I’m afraid if you took that gun you weren’t allowed to take into the ticket station and held it to my head, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you much coherent stuff about individual buildings except:

1. The Trump Tower was as expected – crass, overbearing and super-imposed into an elegant background upon which it stamped its personality.  It took virtually everything lovely it offered from its neighbours in the way of reflections, and added little to the landscape in which it found itself.
2. The wavy tower, top left, still under construction is both gorgeous AND the tallest tower in the world (or possibly city) designed by a woman.
3. The building centre left is designed by a student of Mies van der Rohe and is supposed to contain a city within a city.  It includes 4 or 5 storeys of parking where cars are reversed perilously close to the edge of the building. I mean, heart-stoppingly close.  Our guide informed us that it is valet parking only, and people don’t get to do that for themselves.  Almost as if she’d never watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
4. Talking of which, the office block that Ferris Bueller’s dad worked in was also on the riverside tour.
5. The red brick building, bottom left, was designed as a meat refrigerator.  It had no windows and when developers bought it to convert into apartments it took three months to defrost.
6. The buildings are incredibly interesting and have a fascinating history.  But the thing that really captivated me was the interplay of sun, water and reflections.  There were some simply stunning sights resulting from just those three things.

Once off the boat, I did my level best to break my son and my beloved (for the sake of clarity, I feel obliged to point out those are two separate people) by walking to the bean.

The bean is an Anish Kapoor sculpture set in Millennium Park, roughly opposite the Institute for Art.  It’s a huge, polished baked bean.  And given that it can be accurately described in those 6 words, it’s breathtaking.

Its highly polished surface reflects and distorts its surroundings.  Standing in the centre and looking up to the apex is disturbingly like being caught in a kaleidoscope.  It’s disorientating and disturbing and yet strangely beautiful all at the same time.

We had intended to head for the Science Museum next, but by the time we’d done all of this – pausing only for a cherry snow cone which I elegantly tipped down my boobs, spattering myself liberally with random red stains – the Science Museum was almost shut.  So we elected to pay a flying visit to the Institute of Art, instead.

Learning point…. ummmm… what are we up to?  Anyway.  Number.  It turns out my son has opinions about art!! By which I mean proper, informed opinions.  Now, many of these involve your usual suspects.  He quite likes Van Gogh and thinks Monet is overrated, for example.  He likes Lichtenstein and is a proper fan of a Barbara Hepworth.  We can all agree the boy in the Mary Janes is a bit weird…  But Josh reserves his clearest views for Pollock.

As it turns out, he’s not a fan.  You’d never know, would you??

The gallery was amazing.  Truly wonderful.  We stayed for two hours, and barely scratched the surface.  We saw Chagall’s stained glass windows (breathtaking); galleries of impressionists (some amazing; some amazingly mediocre); the modern galleries including Liechtenstein, Twombly, Pollock, Picasso, Hirst, Hockney, Warhol.

I’m going to leave you with a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, which is newly one of my favourite pictures ever; and a Koons sculpture of a woman in the bath photographed by my beloved….