Chicago Part I

A few of our Brit group flew out to Chicago on Thursday for a few days and I was ecstatic to leave the stress of work behind for my first, albeit short, break this year. After less than 3 hours we were at our hotel, so Nancy and I quickly unpacked and headed straight down to the river for an Architectural River Tour.

This is our hotel lobby above. The rooms were old fashioned but surprisingly well equipped, even having an electric kettle which was frustrating since all of us had neglected to pack tea bags.

We walked past the NBC building where I realized for the first time that the annoying chip I'd always noticed in one of the logo's segments was actually the beak of a peacock.

In the Tribune Plaza by the Chicago River stands these giant statues from Grant Wood's painting, 'American Gothic'.

We got on board our boat and literally sailed into the sunset. It was a beautiful evening and the sun glinted and bounced off of the glass buildings. The first skyscraper was built in Chicago in 1885 and the city's skyline has a diverse collection of architectural periods. The large Skyscraper on the right is the Trump International Hotel & Tower. When the plans were first announced, it would've been the tallest building in the world, but the plans were scaled down a few hundred feet after 9/11.

This 'corn on the cob' building is Marina City built in 1964, a city within a city, with residential and commercial property within and a marina underneath.

The Chicago River has many fascinating bridges crossing it for both road and rail purposes; this is a railway bascule style bridge. The Sears Tower is in the background with the white antennas, the world's tallest building until 1994.

333 West Wacker Drive is an all glass building built in 1984 and follows a bend in the river. The architects were recognized with an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1984.

This beautiful art deco building was completed in 1929 and compliments the Civic Opera House, also art deco, across the other side of the river.


I loved the sunlight dappling the buildings and the reflections in the glass.

This is River City built in 1986 with a private marina and each condo unit being a wedge shape, fanning out either towards the windows or inward to the atrium.

Another view of part of the skyscape with the gothic Tribune Tower, center, built in 1925, and won first place out of 263 entries in a much publicized international design competition. The walls hold a collection of stones from famous monuments and sites around the world (and the moon), including the Arc de Triomphe, Parthenon, Berlin Wall, Alamo, Great Wall of China, Forbidden City, White House, Taj Mahal, Great Pyramid of Cheops, Petrified Forest, Badlands, St. Peter's, Notre-Dame, Hagia Sophia, Antarctica, Omaha Beach, and Mammoth Cave.

This Italian style building was where the river cruises started from.

The city is covered in beautiful carvings and friezes, many of them art deco.

We saw a few jazz performers and even a guy with a full set of drums on the street.

The Water Tower, built in 1869, is one of the few buildings to survive the Chicago Fire in 1871.

This parking lot was next to our hotel, a Frank Lloyd Wright influence.

This bronze sculpture is of a local artist, Jaume Plenza, in 2007.

And this is a dress which I adored but didn't even dare to look at the price tag.
After our tour, Nancy and I went back to the hotel where we met another friend who'd just arrived. We went to the bar and started chatting to a friendly Welsh guy called Tony, who has retired and now spends his retirement traveling around the world and supporting the Welsh Rugby team, who Tony took great delight in telling us were staying at our hotel along with the BBC film crew.

Me and Tony having a laugh. We spent the next three nights meeting Tony in the evenings and having even more laughs. He's a splendid chap and by the end of our stay, we'd become good friends with him. He took great delight in giving us the first name of a guy that walked past, telling us to say hello when they emerged from the mens' room, and then laughing at us when we discovered their true identities. One by one, we were introduced to the bigwigs of the Welsh Rugby Union.

Me, Jill, Dennis Gethin (Welsh Rugby Union President) and Nancy.

Tony and David Pickering (WRU Chairman).

Me with David. I was checking each person on my iphone as I learned their names; I couldn't believe we were in such awesome company.

Me, Roger Lewis (WRU Chief Executive) and Jill. I'd also checked him out and he was very impressed with the iphone, I actually lost it for about 15 minutes while he played around with it. We saw a few of the players who came down but they were only drinking coffee and didin't stay long, obviously in preparation for their match against America on Saturday.
All evening, we kept grinning like cheshire cats to Tony and eachother and exclaiming, 'Bloody Hell!'. We could barely believe our luck at meeting these gentlemen, and what a fabulous way to end our first day in Chicago.

English Sweets

I've just returned from a from a few days in Chicago so have plenty of photos to edit and entries to post, but a parcel from England has delayed the process. As I waited for my computer to start, I ran out to my mail box and found a package had arrived from Mum.

An old fashioned sweet shop has opened up in Mum & Dad's village and has been doing a roaring trade. Mum sent me a box of goodies, some of which I hadn't seen since childhood. As I opened the box, I was transported back as my favorite sweets tumbled onto the table. There were Flying Saucers, Refreshers, Sherbert Lemon & Strawberries, bags of sherbert which would stain the finger used for dipping and licking.


Treacle Toffees, Rainbow Drops, spearmint sweets, lime sweets with a chocolate center, jumbo Fruit Salads and Black Jacks, and proper old fashioned Aniseed Balls with the tiny black aniseed pip in the middle.
Needless to say, Chicago was forgotten as I started sampling and reminiscing, so Chicago posts won't appear for another couple of days!

Poppies

For 7 summers on my way to work, I've driven past an ocean of scarlet flowers which bloom on grassy banks lining the ramps on and off Rte 28 and Rte 50, and every year I've thought about photographing them but never done so. They are not easily accessible and I had to park half a mile away and walk to them. The first time I tried this, I'd got about 100yds from the car before I realized that my camera card was once again left in my laptop. As I was on my way to meet friends, I had to abandon poppies that day.
The next time I had a free hour or so, the poor poppies had been flattened by torrential rain the previous night so that day my poppy shoot had to once again be put off. Saturday was my third attempt and despite a high wind, I was determined to make the best of what could be the last available time this year as the flowers were starting to fade. The results are below and though not brilliant, will tide me over until next year.

Afternoon Hike

On Monday afternoon, anxious to walk off some of the effects from the BBQ the day before, I went for a hike with Barb and Arde around part of Bull Run Marina. The weather was looking stormy and we were accompanied throughout the hike with rumbles of thunder and dark clouds.

Regardless, we soldiered on and the scenery around the lake and creeks was delightful. Not so as we got further inland and our boots thumped on through a landscape of brown paths banked by piles of brown leaves from years before. As we clambered up and down hills it felt like a boot camp and after we'd completed about 3 miles, we decided we'd had enough. But we had definitely had a good workout and worked up a sweat so we were content with that.

I loved the contrasting patterns in the barks of these trees, one made of squares and the other of parallel lines.

As we stopped by the water, I noticed a blue gleam on a tree trunk and thinking it was a butterfly zoomed in to take a photo. It was instead a worm, but I was unable to identify it.

Barb found this Tulip Tree flower on the ground which was lucky as they've finishing flowering for the year. This is the state tree of Indiana and the flower has a faint cucumber smell.

A solitary Swallowtail flittered around the water's edge and was kind enough to stay still while I took a photo.


Honeysuckle tangled along the banks and blackberry flowers were in abundance promising a bumper crop of fruit in a few weeks.

This little dragonfly rested briefly while I snapped my shutter. We spent a while hanging around this area watching the wildlife and listening to splashes from the river as fishes started hunting flies for dinner. A lovely way to end the holiday weekend.

Stony Man Hike, Skyline Drive

Saturday was a beautiful day for a hike and I'd opted to join a group who were doing one of the picturesque hikes on the Skyline Drive. The group was aimed at the 50 year old age group and although I'm not there for a while yet, I'd assumed that since they were hiking, they'd be pretty fit.

Wrong. We started off well and as trudged up the stony incline, I relished the thought of a good work out. I was amazed when after only 20 minutes or so, we were already at a vista, and then astonished to see the whole group settle down on the rocks to glug water and pull out bags of nuts and snacks to replenish the 30 or so calories expended on the way up. I hadn't even broken into a sweat!

To add to the moment, one of the guys said goodbye to us all and promptly climbed down one of the steep ledges and started pulling ropes, pulleys and rappels from a bag as he was going to spend the rest of the afternoon rock climbing. I had a feeling that this was going to be an eventful afternoon and I wasn't wrong.

The views were spectacular and we stopped at 5 or so panoramic outlooks for photos and further sustenance intakes. The group was very friendly and I had many pleasant chats along the way.

One lady, Phyllis, was like me, keen to make faster progress and we spent much of the remaining hike up front chatting incessantly.

She spotted this little chipmunk scurrying through the leaves.

As we progressed, Phyllis started having knee & back issues which slowed our pace a little so a few other faster walkers caught us up. We continued as a group way in front of the others. Reaching a paved road, there was some conflict as to which way we should go, so we split into 2 groups hoping to reach the restaurant where we would all meet for lunch.

The road above is the Skyline Drive which runs along the Shenandoah mountain tops. We reached some log cabins where we sat on benches so Phyllis could rest and the last woman in our group continued walking promising to return with a car. After about 15 minutes, I noticed some ladies emerging from their cabin, and managed to get a ride to the restaurant.

We met the other faster walkers but were surprised to discover that we were still ahead of the remaining group until we found out that they had also run into difficulties. One of the women had fallen twice and was being escorted slowly back to meet us.
We managed to get through lunch without further incident and returned to our cars for the journey home. I've signed up with this group to go sailing on a schooner in June where we will be given the opportunity to be crew members on the boat. I'm wondering now if this was a good idea, but watch this space!