A Tale of Two Cities (Part 1)

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Chicago and Toronto, two different cities for two different reasons. Chicago was a business trip to learn about Profoto’s amazing new LED lights and Toronto was a chance to visit my daughter and to cheer the Toronto Blue Jays on to their ALCS championship success.

When I first decided to go Chicago, I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had never been, but when I spoke to people about my upcoming trip, everyone said I would love it: “it is a beautiful city, the people are very friendly, and the architecture is amazing”  is what came up in my conversations over and over again. I was also a bit concerned travelling to the States with all the horror stories at the border, but I was also reassured that I would have no problems, and as it turns out, I did not.

Once in Chicago after meeting other Canadians from Ontario who were attending the meeting, the comparison between Chicago and Toronto came up several times. The similarities between the two cities,and the one outstanding big difference being that Chicago is located on the south west side of one of the great lakes (Lake Michigan) and Toronto on the north side (Lake Ontario) was the main subject of conversation. Being situated on the opposite side of a lake seamed to confuse my fellow traveller’s sense of orientation, but since I had never been to Chicago, I had no sense of orientation to confuse. For me, both cities have a very long history, and eclipse Vancouver in size.

When I was not at the training session and in meetings, I was lucky enough to have my wife join me and we decided to stay an extra day to see the city everyone said we would love. Walking around Chicago one gets a sense of the size of the city, and there are some great spots to explore. I heard there are some areas to avoid, but few cities don’t have this.

We loved walking around the area of the hotel we were staying in, which was near Wicker Park in the West Town area of Chicago. We liked walking among the old brick homes and seeing their gardens. Never once did we feel unsafe.

To get around the city we mostly used Uber, but if/when I go back, I would use the local transit which seemed to go almost everywhere. Since we were first-timers, Uber was what we did.

Chicago is known for its blues, I mean, have you not seen The Blues Brothers movie? Jake and Elwood were not sighted but we did go to Buddy Guys Legends. https://buddyguy.com/  This was a great evening that started out with up-and-coming Blues musicians, followed by an amazing couple of sets from Brandon Santini https://www.brandonsantini.com/   and a cameo appearance from Buddy Guy himself, which apparently hardly ever happens, but I’m not too sure about that. Either way, it was an amazing evening and one of the highlights of the trip.

Another highlight of our time in Chicago was going to see a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley field. We had purchased tickets weeks ahead and crossed our fingers that there would be good weather as we chose not to be under cover, and the weather was perfect. Wrigley field is situated on the north side of Chicago. It’s a classic American baseball stadium, built in 1914, and it is the second oldest baseball stadium in the USA. It was such a great experience to be there.

There is so much going on ahead of the game – lots of bars all around the stadium holding pre-game events as well as activities for families before the game just outside the stadium grounds. It was a real party atmosphere. What we found unusual is that during the game there was so much coming and going, getting up walking around, coming back, getting up walking around, and those sitting next to me holding never ending conversations…. Was anyone actually watching the game other than the Service Ambassadors? Anyway, we had a great time and the Cubs won.

There are many amazing cultural events and institutions in Chicago, and there is no way we could see them all, but with the short time we were going to be there, I had to choose just one so I chose a quick visit to the Art institute of Chicago https://www.artic.edu/  The walk through downtown along the way was great – Millennium Park, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain… all were inspiring. I didn’t leave enough time for us to see much at the Art institute, and there are so many great works of art to see that you could spend a day if not a week just in the museum. We did have a chance to see some iconic art pieces, although it was a bit rushed walking from gallery to gallery. I didn’t know until now that they have a map for “what to see in an hour”.  https://www.artic.edu/highlights/3/what-to-see-in-an-hour  Luckily we saw most of what was listed, but missed the Cindy Sherman work. Well, we had to leave something for next time.

The final big highlight of our time in Chicago was the River Architecture cruise. Not to say we saved the best for last as this list is not exactly in order, but it was a very special experience to be on the Chicago River looking up and across from some amazing buildings and architecture. Chicago’s main river system is the Chicago River, which has three branches (North, Main, South) and eventually connects to the Mississippi River. There was also a story about the cleaning up of the Chicago River, which for a time was used for sewage, dumping of garbage, dead animals and the occasional gangster, but I will leave that to the tour guide to tell you about that on your tour. The reason we went was to see as much of Chicago’s architecture as we could in a short period of time, and to find out a bit about the history too. There were a lot of recommendations about this tour and it did not disappoint.

Watch for my next post about our travels to Toronto, and an update on those new LED lights from Profoto!