Tour/Buildings

Added after I wrote the rest of this post because I left it out accidentally. We were at the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) at a bad time of day for photos. ha ha. It is truly breathtaking, even from the bottom, where we were. :) If you enlarge this photo full screen, you can see the skydeck boxes jutting out from the side. That's where you can step out on two inch thick glass boxes where it is apparently like stepping out on air. Our tour guide told us that in the winter they have to shut down the top 5 levels or so of the building because the wind makes the building sway so much that the elevators get stuck if they try to go up that high. The building sways about 6 inches at that time of year at the top. NO THANK YOU!

We were thrilled with our experience with the double decker bus tour!
It is truly a great way to really see all the sights around the city. It goes slowly so you can take plenty of pictures,and the open air top gives you a great view of everything.

This is a construction site where they were going to build the tallest skyscraper in the world. They haven't worked on it in two+ years.
(all these facts are from the tour guides, so I haven't verified any of them, ha!)

A beautiful view of the city and the Chicago River. Apparently this is the only river in the world that does not flow into the nearest largest body of water. They reversed it due to excessive contamination. It now runs down to St. Louis, ha ha.

I am truly sorry that I probably won't be able to remember a lot of the buildings. :( I am not good at remembering that kind of stuff.

I do remember that this is the Wrigley Building.

View from the bottom of the Hancock Building

Hard Rock Chicago

The Merchandise Mart. Where retailers used to come and purchase/see new products for their stores (think old mercantiles, etc). Now open to the public. I want to see this next time!

Route 66 started in Chicago.

A sculpture given to the city by Picasso. Unnamed.

"Corncob buildings" These were built when people were leaving the cities for the suburbs. It was designed as a city within a city, with a grocery store, barber, movie theater, skating rink, etc. inside. The first 10 floors are parking. That little curvy building in the middle is the House of Blues.

Trump Tower on the right, and another building on the left. Can't remember.

Corey, Katie, and Noah in front of the tour bus.

The Chicago "bean" sculpture.

This sculpture is in Millennium Park. You can see the skyline reflected in it.

A great place for neat photo shots!

This is the view directly underneath the middle arch of the bean.

This is a curved building. The tallest skyscraper in the world designed by a woman.

Soldier Field, where the Chicago Bears play. A very ugly stadium. They renovated and put a modern looking extension on top of a very cool looking "older" type style.

A view of the skyline from North Shore Drive by the lake.

Going under the bridge to Navy Pier. Some of the bridges we went under cut it very close to us. ha ha. In fact, they warned on a few that if you stand up.....um...you would be dead.

City in the background.

Lunch at the Rainforest Cafe downtown. Our bus tour ticket book had coupons for free kids meals! yay!

The Chicago Theater Marquis. Apparently the only thing shot in the city for the movie.

5:00 traffic on the bus.

A reflection of some buildings in another one.

This is apparently one of the more famous places to shoot movies in Chicago. It is very enclosed with the surrounding buildings and has a "dead end" look with the large building at the end. It was used for Wayne Industries in the Batman movies. (I think that is right). It gets 2-4 hours of sunlight in the summer, and 1-2 hours of sunlight in the winter.

I got a lot more pictures, but I don't want to bore you with tons of random buildings! ha ha.