Mc Minutes: Chicago Trip - Day 3

My mother was off to Day 2 of her workshop so I walked with her up to the classroom and then I pretty much had the whole day free again. Adrianne picked me up to drive me around to places that were too far to walk to the day before. While waiting for her, I got a few pictures of blooming trees on the hotel property.

Before heading downtown, Adrianne took me by to show me her house. On the way we passed this interesting church. I have since learned that it is a Ukrainian Orthodox Church - named St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church. I has a 13 domed roof with 12 domes symbolizing the 12 apostles and the largest center dome symbolizing Jesus Christ.

Once we headed east towards downtown I really enjoyed seeing the Chicago skyline getting nearer and nearer!

There's the old Sears Tower – now called the Willis Tower. I had to take 3 pictures to get the entire thing!

There were some glass balconies recently added way up on the 103^rd floor. Not sure if I could bring myself to go out on one of them or not!

I zoomed in to see the glass balconies:

Luckily, Carmine got finished early with a downtown appointment so we picked him up right after we got there. We had just driven around a little while more when Adrianne’s son, Trey, called and said he had gotten released from school early. So we picked him up too. They drove me all over the place - by the McCormick Center, Soldier Field and we even ventured into a part of the Southside where they have torn down some projects and are trying to revitalize the area.

How would you like to have one of these parking places located right inthe heart of downtown?:

Here is a pretty cool looking modern skyscraper:

View looking up out of Adrianne's sunroof:

This building was in one of the Batman movies:

I like how this old building was preserved when they built the new one on top of it:

There were several big clocks in downtown. Here is one of them:

Here is another side of the Library my mother and I had seen from the train station the other night. From this angle you can tell that these are definitely owls:

When I got back to work after my trip, my friend Jenny asked if I had seen the buildings that look like corn. I knew exactly which ones she was talking about:

This is the famous Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue (the magnificent mile): I believe it was one of very few structures left standing after the Great Fire.

Here we had headed towards the southside. These are some "projects". I ha always heard bad things about projects but these actually look pretty nice to me:

More southside:

Here is an old church down there:

Detail from old church:

Here is Soldier field. The last time I was in Chicago (1999) that big new structure had not yet been plopped in the middle of the old structure!

Here we are passing multi-million dollar condos located right on the waterfront:

Next, we headed up north to Evanston, the town where Adrianne said she would really like to live. It is a really nice, quaint town right on lake Michigan. It is also home to Northwestern University and Loyola University:

I really liked this window? door?

We ate Spanish “tapas”, which I had never eaten before.

I got a good picture of Adrianne and Carmine:

I tried to get a picture of Trey but the background was too bright.

Then we walked around a bit in the small downtown of Evanston.

In the downtown area I noticed several overhangs like this:

And like this:

Adrianne and I knew Carmine and Trey did not get enough to eat at the Tapas restaurant so we decided to eat again – this time Adrianne and I split an Italian Beef Sandwich and Carmine ate the fries. Trey had a full meal – hamburger, Fries and soda. I had never had an Italian Beef Sandwich before.

Look closely at the "B" in "Beef":

There's a bird in it!

I just liked the look of this fire truck so i took a picture of it!

We went back to the beach where some construction work was being done – who knows what they were doing. Possibly in the future if I ever get back, I will see!