Chicago

Two weekends ago we had a 3 days long weekend thanks to Labor's day. On 09/09/09 we were going to attend Michelle's uncle wedding in Chicago so we flew a few days before and enjoyed some time visiting the city. I have to say I was not thrilled at the idea of spending 5 days in the midwest in just one city, but I actually really liked Chicago. The city architecture is fantastic, the skyscrapers and "the loop" area actually impressed me more than Manhattan. Apparently this is where all this frenzy of building tall things started, after the city suffered from a massive fire in 1871.

You get Gothic towers, glass towers, the Sears towers are still the second tallest building on earth (the view from atop is fantastic).

The Chicago Tribune building at sunset


View from the Sears Tower.

I enjoyed walking around and recognizing all the areas that were providing the background to one of my favorite movies ever: The Blues Brothers. I wished for a few seconds I could jump in an old cop car, and jump over the river using one of these mobile bridges as a ramp, with some loud blues playing: "sweet home Chicagoooo".


Or a little bit later listening to the Elevated Train (The El) passing buy, I couldn't help but remember Elwood's hotel room. This thing is really loud!


We stopped for an afternoon at the Art Institute and enjoyed the largest collection of impressionist paintings outside of France, and as Impressionism is my favorite painting's style we took our time. Their collection of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh is worth the visit. We also spent some time in the modern art wings, and for most of it, neither of us really get it, but it's still interesting to look at.


When M saw this one, her first words were "that's my brain!". You can clearly see it on the picture :).

We also spent some time in Millenium Park and I really enjoyed "The Bean" (Cloud Gate), this large reflective metallic structure (kind of like a giant mercury bubble) shaped like a bean is exposed among many other large displays of modern public art. I enjoyed taking pictures of people taking pictures of their reflections.


We also tried the local food specialties including super duper extra thick stuffed Pizza (not bad, but not breathtaking) and steaks at Morton's (breathtaking, this was truly amazing).


I got to meet all M's family (on her mom side) and we had quite a nice time at the wedding, dancing to a great band's music in great company.

You can find more pictures of Chicago there (first series all in B&W) and pictures from the wedding here (I am changing my digital workflow and it seems I overexposed many quite a bit in post-processing and will probably do another round of corrections).

Edit: I did one round of corrections on the exposures, it should be a little bit less blindingly bright.