Chicago – day one

No trip back to Illinois would be complete without a trip into the “city”.  Fortunately my dad lives within walking distance to the train station.  We catch a morning train and join the thousands of commuters heading to work in downtown Chicago.

Once we arrive at Union Station we need to decide; do we walk, take a cab, or take the water taxi to Navy Pier?  It’s a lovely sunny morning with light breezes and in the 70’s.  Walk we shall.  After 2 days of rain, I’m loving this nice weather.  Our destination is Millennium Park on Michigan Avenue.  Instead of heading straight there, we’ll take a short detour past the Civic Center for a photo-op at the Picasso.

There are more folks running around the Picasso than I anticipated. After some patient waiting, hoping the people would somehow miraculously disappear, I relent and quickly snap some shots.  Not the kind of shots I was hoping for.  I guess this is reason enough for a return visit to photograph the Picasso, hopefully on it’s own without a crowd crawling around.  We head to Millennium Park and after meandering around, we’re off to the Art Institute.  The Art Institute of Chicago is one of my favorite places to visit.  It brings back childhood memories of school field trips.  Since daughter took a course at College; Intro to Visual Arts, she has a new-found interest in the art community.  We spend most of our time viewing Monet.  Daughter is well versed in his works and proceeds to brief me on some background and history of Monet’s Water Lilies painting.  Um, perhaps she did learn more at college than the latest brew at New Belgium 🙂  Although I love Monet’s works, I am partial to Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  As a child, I was fascinated by a painting composed of dots.   No brush strokes here.

After almost three hours of admiring these works of art, we need to catch the train back to the burbs.  We enjoy a brisk walk back to the train station with plans to return to the city tomorrow.  The Field Museum is on tomorrows list….top priority.