Have you ever taken an architectural tour? Chablis and I took one last week of Chicago and we really enjoyed it. We booked a trip with Chicago Line Cruises, and opted for the 1 1/2 hour boat cruise. The
$ 40.00 per person tickets included the boat ride, an informative docent who spoke for the entire 90 minute trip and a treat table of Starbucks coffee, assorted teas, water and homemade lemonade, as well as delicious, fresh baked muffins and cookies. Water, a boat, a nice day and food - What's not to like??
The trip starts out at the North Pier Dock, which is located just blocks away from Navy Pier. The cruise ship passes under Lake Shore Drive....
rounds Ogden Slip and slides into the Chicago River....
Look on the left side of the building below. That's a window washer hard at work. Windex anyone??
The view from the river offers a totally different perspective of the buildings that I usually see from a distance...
We heard about the different architectural styles and the famous architects who worked on the various buildings. After the Chicago Fire in 1871, the entire lakefront business district was wiped out and had to be re-built from the bottom up. Actually, I should do a blog post on that one day, because it's really interesting.
This is the NBC building.....
The Civic Opera House...
This is the Wrigley building and I like this type of architecture the best. I like all the columns and intricate decorations.
Marina Towers....
The Merchandise Mart, which is one of the largest buildings in the world and was once owned by the Kennedy family....
The Sun-Times building...
The Spirit of Progress is perched atop the Montgomery Ward building, which was once the national headquarters of the world's oldest mail order business....
That's Sears Tower in the background. Well, actually it's now known as Willis Tower, but I can't bring myself to utter the words... It's 108 stories high and is the tallest building in the United States. The docent told us that the top of the building will sway as much as 3 feet in the wind. One of the upper floors has three glass balconies that are built out 4 feet and for a fee you can go stand in them and stare down at Wacker Drive, 1353 below. I haven't done it yet, but one of these days I will.
That building in the distance, to the right of center, is all 14k gold on top....
There is only one skyscraper that was allowed to be built east of Lake Shore Drive, and that's Lake Point Tower. It's one of my favorite buildings because of its graceful curves. The windows are bronze tinted and surrounded by gold anodized aluminum frames that make the building shimmer gold in the sun.
We lucked out and got to see some of the bridges open while we cruised by....
Returning to port we could see the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier....
When we were on the river we saw this water fountain...
The docent told us that the city is in the process of building a 4 mile Riverwalk, so after the cruise we ventured down the portion of it that had been completed. We strolled past restaurants, shops and lots of empty store fronts just waiting for businesses to move in. We also came across the water fountain again...
The Riverwalk is going to be a beautiful addition to the city and I imagine it will be bubbling with activity once it's completed. We walked over to see the Tribune building and then had lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern, which you can read about here.
If you're in Chicago and want to see the city from a different perspective and learn some of the history of these amazing buildings, then I suggest you take one of the boat tours. The only thing I didn't like, and this had nothing to do with the boat tour company at all, was the parking situation. We chose to drive into Chicago that day and park at one of the parking garages. The price for 4 hours was $ 36.00. Are they insane?? To park a car? Next time I'll just take the Metra and hike the 2.5 miles to the boat tour. Keep that in mind.
