Chicago Towing

Chicago, Screenz Internet Cafe, Saturday, October 21, 2005, 9:15

Yesterday I woke up at 5:00 pm Chicago time and I thought I might as well go ahead of the crowd at the Arlington House Youth Hostel and take a quick shower. At 6 o'clock, I was already on the Internet, recording my first impressions of this fascinating city and 6:30 I left the hostel. It was still dark outside and the sun was just slowly starting to rise.

I walked in the quiet neighborhood of Lincoln Park all the way to the shores of Lake Michigan, where the cool wind comes howling off the lake. Joggers, cyclists and walkers to power were already in force. I walked around for about 15 minutes, but when the wind gets too strong, I decided to take a bus heading south in an area called "Old Town", near North Street and N. Wells Street. This is a clean, well maintained area of historic homes and the location of the Second City Comedy Club, a place that gave birth to so many talented comedians.

After a morning walk around the old town I jumped on the back el-train and went downtown to check. I stayed in the loop and headed toward the opening of Michigan Avenue and Grant Park. It is interesting to wind between buildings in the Loop was much stronger than in open areas just off the shore of Lake Michigan.

Michigan Avenue and Grant Park is one of the areas where the beauty of Chicago is the most striking. citymap Daniel Burnham in 1909 which has retained a huge amount of green space right on the shore of Lake Michigan was brilliant, and visitors and local residents benefit from the vast green area between the Loop and lake. Grant Park is early date all the way back to 1835, when foresighted citizens, fearing commercial development at the lake, have lobbied to protect open space. Vision Burnham Park as a formal landscape with museums and civic buildings became reality: today Grant Park holds 3 of the most distinguished museums of the city's Field Museum of Natural History, Shedd Aquarium and the Planterium Adler.

The Buckingham Fountain is the centerpiece of Grant Park, the great city "backyard" and is located in a beautifully landscaped garden, one of the finest examples of city landscaping Fine Arts style. This is an exact replica of the fountain at Versailles, just twice as big, and with these measures, it is one of the largest fountains in the autonomous world.

At the north end of Grant Park is Millennium Park, with an investment of $ 495 million Chicago company's most ambitious public. unsightly railroad tracks and parking lots have been transformed into multi-media entertainment outdoors in recent years. Among the salient features of Millennium Park are the Frank Gehry designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the most sophisticated shows of its kind outside the U.S., the deck of a mirror wearing liquidation over Stetson Street, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry and "Cloud Gate" ("The Bean"), a sculpture inspired by the popular liquid mercury, designed by British artist Anish Kapoor. On this beautiful sunny morning, the reflections of skyscrapers in the city had an almost surreal for them.

I still had about an hour and a half before my friend Linda would arrive at the Randolph Street station, so I decided to head north on Michigan Avenue in two of my favorite buildings: the Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower Chicago. The Wrigley Building is the headquarters of the Wrigley (chewing gum) and the company was built in 1920 by company founder William Wrigley Jr. It was the first in a series of benchmarks to south end of the Magnificent Mile.

The design of the Tribune Tower was the result of international competitiveness.