Planning a road trip to Chicago for October is “iffy”. Estimated weather forecasts a week before our journey were to be in the low 60’s with winds around 8 mph. Sounds pleasant for walking around the Chicago downtown area, experiencing their many wonderful museums, trekking the pathways of Millennium Park and experiencing a variety of their many restaurants.
However, apparently, our meteorologists have yet to master the art of weather forecasting. While there, temperatures dropped to the low 40’s and winds gusted to over 30 mph.
Winter attire kept us successfully warm enough to enjoy the avenues with their bountiful variety of old architectural buildings. I was able to walk over five miles each day. Pretty good for a rickety old man with hip problems.
During our journey, we took a ride on a Riverboat that passed many new and old structures that are packed, side-by-side within Chicago’s densely populated loop.
Here, a trained docent spoke to us sharing fascinating stories behind a variety of buildings along the Chicago River. We heard how Chicago grew from a small settlement into one of the world's largest cities in less than 100 years.
Later, we walked a short mile to the Museum of Contemporary Art. We had planned to visit the cities famous Art Museum but found that it was closed during our stay - a huge disappointment.
After a short time glaring at contemporary art, we chose to walk a short distance, toward our Airbnb, to have dinner at a nice Irish Pub along the way. Good dinner and a great craft beer there, then another mile walk to our housing for our nightly martini and a well deserved period of relaxation before retiring to our rooms, in an attempt to spend the night recovering from overused bones that day.
Our next day, less planned, found us wandering streets, entering an interesting, old building that still had a beautiful elevator that still required an operator to run it. That brought back memories of my much younger days.
Later, we spent time walking within the Millennium Park, through its Rose Garden, and visiting “The Bean”, a highly polished stainless steel elliptical sculpture which reflect Chicago’s famous skyline and the clouds above. A high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting us to touch its mirror-like surface and see our image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.
Before the thought of having dinner, we chose the short walk back “home” to rest for a while.