Welcome to Gotham City ...

Day 17 - Friday 25 January 2008

The best way to visualise this wonderful, amazing, must-visit, city of Chicago is to check out the last few Batman movies (you know the Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney and, best of all, Christain Bale ones). The Gothic stone architecture, aligned alongside enormous 1970s glass towers has you walking around, eyes upwards, expecting at any minute to see the Bat-sign projected onto the sky and the Dark Knight himself to swoop down and land in the alleyway next to where you're standing. Add into the mix freezing temperatures and heavy snow white outs and it's been another incredible week in Jez-world.

This is the most under-rated city and I've been blown away by it's beauty, the genuine warmth of it's people, their hardiness (more in a sec) and it's buildings that came about as a result of a complete re-build following a devastating fire in 1871. The subsequent regeneration attracted the world's best architects to make Chicago their home for many years and the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century created the Batman backdrop (they filmed the latest movie here last Summer and I shall watch with interest when it's released especially now Heath Ledger has sadly passed away - a tragic loss to the film industry). The Loop that I mentioed before is a rickety old subway that sits ABOVE street level and shakes like buggery whenever you're on it. Here it is back-dropped by the amazing public library just 1 block from my hostel.

And back to those temperatures. Chicago has been in the middle of a cold snap, even for them, and temperatures all week have hovered around 0 degrees FAHRENHEIT. Now that's about MINUS 18 degrees Celsius and makes your brain ache. It's the weirdest feeling. Everyone is wrapped up to the nines and I'm so glad I invested in my kit. I've been freezing cold but toasty enough. All the locals wear ear warmers that go round the back of your head. It's all you can do to walk around for a about an hour before you have to duck into a coffee shop and warm up with said beverage. My caffeine intact has taken a battering. And it's properly snowed so there's about 2/3 inches lying around. When you go out of downtown that is. Man, America hits the salt mines hard. They use tons and tons of it on the roads and it gets everywhere. All my stuff has that salt mark around it that, if you squint at it, could pass for the old map of Gibraltar! They're also unbelievable at clearing it up. America is sooo over-staffed it's unreal. It was the same in Washington. When it snows there's immediately people around in local services uniforms clearing the 'sidewalks'.

But ... when it hasn't been snowing it's been ultra-sunny! I've got so jammy this week. So I went to the top of the Sears Tower (the highest building in America and now about number 3 in the world). I hesitate to do a quiz for the highest after the UN debates so we'll leave that for now! No I won't! It's Taipei 101 in Taiwan (according to Wikipedia so leave it there Matt and Nick). Unbelievable views and here you can just about make out the iconic Soldier Field where the Chicago Bears play and, of course, that's Lake Michigan behind (only frozen out to the breakwater I've now found out).

I also checked out the Shedd Aquarium but it was a bit pants because you had to pay to see the sharks. And I don't know about you but after Planet Earth's footage of the great whites leaping out of the water to snaffle those seals anything else shark related these days seems a bit of a let down!!!

But Pizzeria Uno on the Near North side of town was a treat. It was where the deep dish pizza was born and it takes them 40 minutes to prepare and serve. But boy was it worth the wait. The Lonely Planet suggested it and came up trumps. Really tomatoey and washed down with a beer, eaten at the 1943 founded-bar watching ESPN's sports news. A top evening.

But not as top as last night's trip out to Michael Jordan land i.e. the United Center! I joined a hostel organised outing to watch the Chicago Blackhawks take on the Columbus Blue Jackets in the National Hockey League (ice hockey). For just $15 we had seats right at the top of the stadium but looking virtually down on the action and it was so easy to see the puck and all the missing teeth on the players. Now there's a sport that's not good for the looks. Those guys are brutal and there was plenty of body-checking, tactical to-ing and fro-ing, 'let's go Hawks' cheering but only one lousy deflected goal (that Monkey Ashton-Blanksby from Lichfield Hockey Club would have scored had he been able to skate). And it wasn't to the Hawks so my bad luck for the home teams is back. I was going to watch the Chicago Bulls play basketball the night before but their form is so bad (according to the Chicago Tribune) I didn't think it was wort it. Here's me with my Tamao (spelling?!) from Nagoya in Japan and he did a top job of snapping me and Michael! (They have a very impressive 6 NBA title banners hanging in the stadium. Unreal in American sports and I doubt ever to be repeated).

I've really spent quite a bit of time just living here around Chicago. I got a much needed haircut from a really old-skool barbers that had a copy of Penthouse as one of it's magazines in the 'read while you wait for a cut' rack! Crappy haircut because the guy was so keen on showing off his city to me and recommending buildings to visit. They're so proud of their city the Chicagoans but not of their gangster past. It's really difficult to find anything about it. The shops only have the odd Al Capone book and you won't find any tours offering to show you the grizzly sights. I used the old Lonely Planet though and found this Holy Name Cathedral where a couple of Capone's rivals were gunned down nearby.

And today was time to get some of Chicago's great culture (the theatre scene is huge) because I went to the Art Institute of Chicago where they have a ton of 19th/20th century European art. I did a Picasso tour and saw a few beauties. I also learned that one of my favourites from an earlier period, Caravaggio, was much revered and copied by numerous artists (like all the greats of course). And they had some amazing sculptures (my favourite art form) including a Touch Library where you could get your hands on some ancient Greek marble and limestone Chinese heads. Outside in Millennium Park (not sure when that was constructed has anyone got any ideas?) they have the ultra-modern 'bean' designed by Anish Kapoor. It's smooth stainless steel and reflects the downtown skyline back at you just like this self-portrait below!

And just as quick as it arrives it's time to move on again. Tomorrow sees me catch the California Zephyr (legendary!) and head over the Great Plains. I toyed with the idea of heading to Oklahoma and seeing some of that part of the wild west but decided you can't do everything and want to see even more snow. So come Sunday morning I'll be deep in the Rocky Mountains and in the Mile High City of Denver planning my trip for the middle of next week into the ski resorts. Is this just getting better and better ...? But it won't be such city-dwelling so the blog's will probably be taking a bit of a back seat. We'll all just have to starve ourselves off them for a couple of weeks ...? But who knows!