Sunday, October 15, 2006
Finally got my lazy bum down to continue on my chicago post. Haha, kristopher of zooomr actually commented on my blog! How cool is that! If you're reading this kris, thanks! and you really ought to be sleeping, dude. Heehee.
ok, we stayed at the Heart o' Chicago motel. Very cheesy name right? But it had many good reviews, and yea, it was pretty good and clean. I had a very good rest there.
while waiting for the guys
the motel served donuts and coffee.. nice
Oh, when we reached our car after breakfast, it was actually covered with frost! It's that cold! it was kinda sticky so I went in to get some warm water which easily washed off the frost on the windscreen.
We spent some time looking for lincoln park, but couldn't really find a good place to park. We then went down to navy pier which charged exhorbitant prices for parking so we didn't stay.
Some people were fishing along the lake michigan harbour and they caught so many fish!!! Like very easy like that!
salmon! The guy who caught these ripped out their roe and used it as bait. WAh, expensive bait eh. The one on the left was still flipping wildly intermittently when I took this photo. Poor thing had its roe ripped out already. That's one of the reasons i hate fish. ew.
some other guy's catch. dunno why different pple catch diff fish. hurhur. i guess its the spot.
Chicago Art Institute
Next, the not-so-cultured paw followed the very cultural colleagues into the art museum. Well I didn't exactly enjoy myself at the Paul Getty Museum in LA, but this time I kinda psychoed myself into being a little more appreciative of the artifacts around. I found the following exhibit real cool.
one of these is a pole arm.. totally maplestoryish! haha!
very interesting. the shields, armours and weapons actually had very intricate carvings and designs on them! I would never have imagined them to have these designs. I mean, they are for rough, outdoor usage and most pple probably die at war anyway, what for make it so elaborate? But they were very amazingly pretty.
oops, the pole arms are here
There were also some chalices [ooh, so davinci code] which housed the relics of different saints! Pretty pretty things. Kinda spooky though.
check out this egyptian necklace. very similar to those that are sold in Tangs or something. I can even make it! So this design was stolen from the egyptians...
There were also asian pottery and artifacts. I was pretty intrigued by some pots [actually i dont remember what they were] which were blue from some chemical reaction. So pretty! It's like, when stuff turn into copper carbonate it looks green and corroded right. This was blue and corroded. Loved it. Too bad I was kinda edgy about taking photos in a museum and I didn't take much.. so silly.
i then breezed through the important works of monet, dali.. that's all i can remember. Probably had more super famous artists and stuff but oh whatever.
i spent a lot of time in the lobby waiting for the rest who were zooming around appreciating the exhibits a lot more than me I suppose.
Next up, lunch! I had almost the exact same thing. BLT crispy chicken sandwich with coffee..
Chicago Public Library
We were walking towards the Sears tower [tallest building i think] when guojun pointed out "what's that building?!" and so we walked towards it to find that it was a library! a real modern library, with books.. ha. Complete with gargoyles! veryvery weird!
even the lamps were beautiful
inside the library
looks like someone took a bite out of the pillar
Random buildings near michigan avenue
sears tower, which had an observation 'skydeck'. After the lousy empire state building experience I wasn't too keen on going up, with the 30min wait. But Zhang xi was still keen so he went up alone while we said we'd meet at the water towers at the magnificent mile later.
damn cool concept! just add dye and your fountain will look really different. Such a simple concept yet no one has used it before. maybe cos its bad for the system or something. Anyway this reminds me of f&n orange crush, the kind we drink for CNY. ha!
happy halloween!
this clock looks like it sprung out of some cartoon and attached itself to the building by hanging on by its limbs
back to the cultural centre on michigan avenue
looks like lettuce! cute choice of road-side plant
Hosted on
Zooomrthis is one end of the michigan ave bridge which opens up!
see the river? it's green. damn pretty.
they were recording some radio station in there! i wonder how the djs stay undistracted.
Hosted on
Zooomrthis chicago tribune building was really special. See those lil protruding rocks? They're from all over the world. they have stuff from the "
Trondheim Cathedral,
Taj Mahal, the
Parthenon, the
Great Pyramid,
The Alamo,
Notre-Dame,
Abraham Lincoln’s Tomb, the
Great Wall of China, the
Berlin Wall among others". It's so clever, by visiting this one building you get to touch rocks from all over the world, and they are rocks that represent great moments in history. As you get to the side/back of the building the rocks get less famous and more american, such as rocks from yellowstone park etc.
The chicago water tower is supposed to be the only structure standing after the great Chicago fire of 1871. Well, I didn't know there was such a fire until I came here and everyone told me. Kinda scary I think. Well, I was more interested in the WAter Tower Place shopping centre which had hollister, a&f, vs.. hehee. didn't buy anything though.
they had wow bao. so damn cute. i cldn't resist buying a ice blended mocha drink and a spicy mongolian beef Bao.
we then waited outside the water tower for zhangxi to come back from his sears tower thing. Meanwhile there was some protest going on with pple from the U.N wearing blue and stuff. I have zero idea what they were protesting against though.
After zhangxi finally turned up, [actually it was a very long walk so it wasn't his fault that he was late] guojun insisted that he shld pay for the cab fare back to our carpark, and they were arguing about it the whole trip back. haa. The cab driver kept talking on the cell phone in a language i didnt understand. Later on I asked him where he was from and he said Somalia! And he was speaking somalian. I wonder how he managed to get a job in US.
The most amazing thing is, when I told him I was from Singapore, he actually knew that we spoke singlish! my god! He didn't call it singlish, he called it some dialect of english, but it was so clever of him. I mean singapore is like some small invisible dot on the global map I would be surprised people even know about singapore. And a somalian cab driver in chicago actually knows that we speak a different form of english. He said he heard abt it on the radio. Wah, why on earth wld US radio talk abt singapore? I was really impressed.
Oh the roads in chicago are pretty crazy. One wld have thought that they would do some proper road/town planning after that great fire but it's still pretty screwed up. I mean who builds bridges that can open up for boats and subways running in between buildings on metal structures built on roads such that the cars are weaving through the metal pillars?
United Center
One of the only things I had set out to do in Chicago.. to visit Michael Jordan! It was unfriendlyish closed though. Luckily their gate was pretty high so we could climb under it to get in.
haha, his statue i mean
i wasn't kidding when i said we had to climb in.
After visiting mikey, we went back to the University of Chicago cos guojun wanted to buy his gf a chicago U teeshirt. Too bad it was sunday so every teeshirt selling shop was closed, but he bought it online in the end. We ended up eating the exact same thing as the previous day, at the noodles shop on campus.
this time i tried the singaporean beehoon! haha.. cldn't finish it, but packed it and had it on the car later on at night. It was ok.. just found it amusing whenever they sell singaporean beehoon.
and soon we were back at the bridge, heading for home.
edit: forgot to add, I think that chicago is the perfect place for toad.. think only he can fully appreciate the dinosaur exhibits, science exhibits, architecture, reference to greek history, art, things to photograph.. then again, he probably know everything there already. hurhur.
