(part III)
Utterly despondent over my leaving the Art Museum, I went without much feeling to Millennium Park.
The faces on The Crown Fountain weren't working properly, yet they did occasionally "spit" all over the little children hanging out beneath them. The girl sitting beside me on the concrete bench had been talking at her cell phone since before I'd arrived and since I'd sat down she'd said good-bye three times. The water puddle on the bench next to me was creeping ever closer, facilitating my decision to get up and take a walk.
I first went to the Cloud Gate, managing to feel only slightly nauseated as I sauntered around and under the giant metal bean.
Heading east, I soon arrived at Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Because words can never express the sheer wonder and interest of the concert venue, I will not attempt description.
The Lurie Garden, however, I can and will paint with words. A cozy, beautiful place possibly created by Muse herself, the garden somehow deflects the noise of the city. A trickling stream winds its way through the garden, refracting the sunlight overhead like a thousand diamonds strewn against pale silk. My feet clomped beautifully against the wooden footbridge.
Were it possible, I would have divided myself in half and spent my time equally between there and the art museum. But I could not. Disappointed, I trudged back to The Crown Fountain. No, I did not cross the BP Bridge. Perhaps I should have, but with my luck I would have found myself hopelessly lost.
So, after gathering our things, we proceeded down The Magnificent Mile.
The Magnificent Mile is magnificent. Hundreds of restaurants and stores, the latter of which boast a wide array of goods at ridiculously high prices made even more ridiculous by the sales tax.
I'm not usually one for shopping, either, but I did stop into H&M. It was overcrowded (mostly by teenage to twenty-something women on the ground floor, mothers with children up the funky steel staircase at H&M Kids), but by this time I wasn't very surprised. The queue at the dressing rooms, however, did shock me. And the pleasant heart-attack waiting for me at check-out? Please!
One t-shirt, one black corset dress and one corset-like tank top. Three items set before the rude gay man (or, rather, the rude man who just so happened to be overtly homosexual) running the register to the immediate left of the middle register being bombarded with piles and piles of clothes (trash bag after trash bag after trash bag) handed over by an apparently very, very wealthy blonde girl.
I say wealthy because my three items, which had totaled a mere $60 or $70 in my rounded up calculations, came to a demented and completely deranged final amount of over $100.
The rude cashier sighed and rolled his eyes melodramatically when I asked to put back the tank top. He did not wish me good-bye.
With this episode playing in my head, I only went to one other store because Apt Teacher's son insisted that we stop by the Disney Store. I bought an Eeyore mug from the clearance wall. It's so cute, that mud. It says "Smile".
In doing all of this without much hassle, we were due to get lost next.
Apt Teacher wanted me to see Navy Pier. For whatever reason, we hadn't stopped by after the Shedd Aquarium when we were on that side of the city. Naturally, we walked up hill and down dale without finding a way to cross traffic. Hope was all but dead when we stumbled upon a group of nurses just off shift.
To get to Navy Pier we had to go underground. Literally, underground. Through a dark, dank tunnel.
From what I witnessed there, it wasn't worth the effort; Navy Pier is nothing like Coney Island. After a few pictures with the bronze statue of Bob Newhart (which is sodding awesome and made up for the less than spectacular experience just beyond the gates of the pier) and some dinner, a ride on the Ferris wheel and a quick look around, we traveled back to the heart of the city.
I stepped inside a record store whose name I've forgotten (though I'm sure it had something to do with a pineapple. Maybe a banana). I do know that it smelt warm, as most small record stores tend to do, and it had a balcony. Alas, I could not go to the balcony because I was soon pulled back outside by a frantic Apt Teacher. She was waving the Metra schedule in her hand.
Our train home left in eleven minutes.
We were 25 blocks from the station.
Running ["as if the very whips of their masters were behind them"], we arrived at the train station with only a minute to spare before our train left.
And then Apt Teacher could not find her ticket.
But we did get on the train and some time later (I don't know how long. I know I didn't fall asleep and yet that ride back is nothing more than a black hole in the universe of my memory), quite a bit later we were tossed out in Kenosha.
Then, of course, we got lost on the way home.
Driving through the yawning maw of the night, empty roads all around us, trapped somewhere between Kenosha and Milwaukee, I thought I'd never see my bed again.
I did. Eventually. Some 18 hours after the Chicago Trip of 2006 began.
All in all, Chicago is nice. It's very clean and [some] of the people there are lovely. The culture is absolutely amazing and there are enough things to do in a one block radius alone to last one person a lifetime.
If I were deaf, I would love Chicago.
I, however, am not deaf.
Utterly despondent over my leaving the Art Museum, I went without much feeling to Millennium Park.
The faces on The Crown Fountain weren't working properly, yet they did occasionally "spit" all over the little children hanging out beneath them. The girl sitting beside me on the concrete bench had been talking at her cell phone since before I'd arrived and since I'd sat down she'd said good-bye three times. The water puddle on the bench next to me was creeping ever closer, facilitating my decision to get up and take a walk.
I first went to the Cloud Gate, managing to feel only slightly nauseated as I sauntered around and under the giant metal bean.
Heading east, I soon arrived at Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Because words can never express the sheer wonder and interest of the concert venue, I will not attempt description.
The Lurie Garden, however, I can and will paint with words. A cozy, beautiful place possibly created by Muse herself, the garden somehow deflects the noise of the city. A trickling stream winds its way through the garden, refracting the sunlight overhead like a thousand diamonds strewn against pale silk. My feet clomped beautifully against the wooden footbridge.
Were it possible, I would have divided myself in half and spent my time equally between there and the art museum. But I could not. Disappointed, I trudged back to The Crown Fountain. No, I did not cross the BP Bridge. Perhaps I should have, but with my luck I would have found myself hopelessly lost.
So, after gathering our things, we proceeded down The Magnificent Mile.
The Magnificent Mile is magnificent. Hundreds of restaurants and stores, the latter of which boast a wide array of goods at ridiculously high prices made even more ridiculous by the sales tax.
I'm not usually one for shopping, either, but I did stop into H&M. It was overcrowded (mostly by teenage to twenty-something women on the ground floor, mothers with children up the funky steel staircase at H&M Kids), but by this time I wasn't very surprised. The queue at the dressing rooms, however, did shock me. And the pleasant heart-attack waiting for me at check-out? Please!
One t-shirt, one black corset dress and one corset-like tank top. Three items set before the rude gay man (or, rather, the rude man who just so happened to be overtly homosexual) running the register to the immediate left of the middle register being bombarded with piles and piles of clothes (trash bag after trash bag after trash bag) handed over by an apparently very, very wealthy blonde girl.
I say wealthy because my three items, which had totaled a mere $60 or $70 in my rounded up calculations, came to a demented and completely deranged final amount of over $100.
The rude cashier sighed and rolled his eyes melodramatically when I asked to put back the tank top. He did not wish me good-bye.
With this episode playing in my head, I only went to one other store because Apt Teacher's son insisted that we stop by the Disney Store. I bought an Eeyore mug from the clearance wall. It's so cute, that mud. It says "Smile".
In doing all of this without much hassle, we were due to get lost next.
Apt Teacher wanted me to see Navy Pier. For whatever reason, we hadn't stopped by after the Shedd Aquarium when we were on that side of the city. Naturally, we walked up hill and down dale without finding a way to cross traffic. Hope was all but dead when we stumbled upon a group of nurses just off shift.
To get to Navy Pier we had to go underground. Literally, underground. Through a dark, dank tunnel.
From what I witnessed there, it wasn't worth the effort; Navy Pier is nothing like Coney Island. After a few pictures with the bronze statue of Bob Newhart (which is sodding awesome and made up for the less than spectacular experience just beyond the gates of the pier) and some dinner, a ride on the Ferris wheel and a quick look around, we traveled back to the heart of the city.
I stepped inside a record store whose name I've forgotten (though I'm sure it had something to do with a pineapple. Maybe a banana). I do know that it smelt warm, as most small record stores tend to do, and it had a balcony. Alas, I could not go to the balcony because I was soon pulled back outside by a frantic Apt Teacher. She was waving the Metra schedule in her hand.
Our train home left in eleven minutes.
We were 25 blocks from the station.
Running ["as if the very whips of their masters were behind them"], we arrived at the train station with only a minute to spare before our train left.
And then Apt Teacher could not find her ticket.
But we did get on the train and some time later (I don't know how long. I know I didn't fall asleep and yet that ride back is nothing more than a black hole in the universe of my memory), quite a bit later we were tossed out in Kenosha.
Then, of course, we got lost on the way home.
Driving through the yawning maw of the night, empty roads all around us, trapped somewhere between Kenosha and Milwaukee, I thought I'd never see my bed again.
I did. Eventually. Some 18 hours after the Chicago Trip of 2006 began.
All in all, Chicago is nice. It's very clean and [some] of the people there are lovely. The culture is absolutely amazing and there are enough things to do in a one block radius alone to last one person a lifetime.
If I were deaf, I would love Chicago.
I, however, am not deaf.
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