My Kind of Town: Most people identify with a certain big city. Generally, it's the big city nearest your home. You use it as shorthand to say where you are from when you are from a town nobody outside your circle could place. Often you maintain a loyalty to the sports teams and familiarity with the local geography. For me it is Detroit, but I don't want it to be Detroit anymore. Detroit is pathetic. I want it to be Chicago. (I suppose, technically, it could be Ann Arbor, since Ann Arbor is reasonably widely known. But Ann Arbor is hardly a big city.)

Problem is, I can't really justify it. Chicago is within driving distance, but it's four times further than Detroit. My only history with Chicago is a few long weekends, as opposed to being born and raised in or near Detroit. If someone asked me where Dexter, MI was I could say "Oh, about four hours east of Chicago," but that's way too contrived. I could wear a Cubs cap and prattle on about Da Bears, but there's nothing worse than manufactured team loyalty. No sir. I can't do it, and that saddens me.

Still, at least I could consol myself with a spur of the moment weekend in Chi-town. One of my faves, The Fairmont, was running a special via Expedia. Amtrak tickets were available. (I even got business class on the way back.) And most importantly, I looked at my Outlook calendar and I saw no free days for weeks, except for the upcoming Friday; it was perhaps my last chance for spontaneous travel. Plans were laid and triggers were pulled.

As I have almost certainly mentioned before, when it makes sense time-wise, Amtrak is vastly superior to air travel, and I don't just say that because of the metaphorical impaling I took at the hands of the airline industry trying to get to and from Harrisburg (above).

You can arrive five minutes before the train leaves if you want to cut it that close. No one will check your bag for hidden 4oz liquids, ask you to take off your shoes, require picture ID; for that matter, they don't even check to see if you have a ticket until the train is underway. Even the tightest coach seat on the train has plenty of legroom. There are no seat belts; you can get up anytime you want, even during takeoff. There is no turning off of unapproved electronic devices. In fact, there are a/c plugs in next to the seats for recharging your phone or hooking up your laptop. The lavatories are about four times the size of those in a plane and there are two in each car. No one is blocking the aisle with a beverage cart -- there is a caf‚ car with lots of food and drink choices and it even has it's own seating so it doesn't feel like eating at the drive-thru.

The only thing they need to do to make it perfect is have assigned seats. That and speed up the trains so I could take it even when my destination was far off. If we had a lattice of high-speed train lines, say 200-300 mph, I would be done with the airline industry for good.

Oh, and have Hooter's girls as conductors. That too.

You arrive at Union Station in Chicago, which is utter bedlam. (By the way, why is it that virtually all big city train stations are either "Union Station" or "Penn Station"? Is there a reason for this apart from total lack of imagination?) From there it's about a $10 cab ride to your hotel, as opposed to a $50 ride from O'Hare.

My hotel, the Fairmont, is not the most luxurious hotel in the city, nor is it the trendiest. But I have settled on it for a few reasons. First, as always, excellent service. Second, location: in this case that means a shot at an excellent view of either the waterfront or the cityscape, but more importantly, you are on the north edge of The Loop giving you ready foot access to virtually anywhere in the downtown area you'd want to go. Millennium Park is just around the corner, the Art Institute is a block or so further. It's twenty minutes to the River North area or all the way up the Magnificent Mile. Lastly, for the workout junkie, the Fairmont is attached to the Lakeshore Athletic Club which is one of the finest health clubs I have ever been in, and I've been in a few, plus it's free if you are a member of Fairmont's President Club which, in itself, is free to join. The Fairmont Chicago makes me happy.

View from my room at the Fairmont (342K)

One unusual aspect of this trip was the bad food. After my mid-afternoon check-in I was hungry for lunch so a slid a few blocks over to Ada's, a place I remembered as being a top notch Jewish deli. (I once had to watch the season final of The Sopranos there because my hotel at the time did not have HBO.) Let's just say it did not measure up to my memory this time. I recall delicious potato-pancake style bread and nicely stacked meats. This time I got unfresh corned beef on what must have been store-bought rye. I was also a bit queasy the rest of night for which the sandwich may or may not have been at fault.

The other disappointment was Lou Malnati's. I wanted some real Chicago style deep dish and was wondering what the current sentiment was for the top joint. A friend of mine insisted Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co. was not to be beat, but that was a cab ride away and too much trouble. Citysearch.com's editor's choice was Lou Malnati's which is in River North. So at lunchtime on a rainy Saturday I trolled on over and snagged a seat at the bar. The verdict: good stuff, but really no better than your basic Uno's or Giordano's. I guess it's wrong to call it a bad food experience. It was ace Chicago Dish, and that is always good, but it was disappointing in that I was hoping for something special. Kick-ass spinach bread, however.

By the way, although it may be heresy not to pick a Chicago or New York joint for the top slot, the very best pizza I have ever had was at Pizzeria Paradiso in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C. It's not deep, but they use the same fresh ingredients and semi-sweet tangy sauce that the better Chicago joints use, except they don't drown it in molten mozzarella. They use feta with a light touch. As good as it gets. But I digress.

About Millennium Park: The City of Chicago really nailed this one cold. Of the unending number of urban renewal and upgrading projects that go on around the country most are boondoggles and white elephants. Most city administrations are so unimaginative, out-of-touch, and downright corrupt that these things become laughable slapstick before ground is broken. Millennium Park, in contrast, is a triumph.

Firstly, there is an open air amphitheatre designed by Frank Gehry. It is a substantial and strikingly contemporary piece of sculpture in and of itself, looking like an unfolding aluminum cloud. Emerging from it is a lattice of metal tubes that extend out over the lawn and somehow seem to amplify the skyline. Just a very cool place to be.

The amphitheatre and lattice (280K)
The Chicago skyline through the lattice (329K)

During my visit they were running free concerts (classical mostly) under the guise of the Grant Park Music Festival. (Why the Grant Park Music Festival is held in Millennium Park as opposed to Grant Park, I don't know.) People were picnicking and bottles of wine were in evidence all across the lawn as folks reclined lazily and enjoyed the music. I plopped myself down and joined them briefly. I was not enamored with the music that night -- I think it was an orchestra from Mexico City, there in honor of Mexico/USA gold cup soccer final being played down the road at Soldier Field. They were obviously very talented, just not to my taste. But I was quite happy to chill there in the cool green grass.

Equally sweet are the other dramatic sculptures. At the forefront of the park stands what is affectionately referred to as The Bean: a large metallic, well...bean -- an oversized elliptical shape made of highly reflective stainless steel. Like the lattice over the lawn in front of the amphitheater, it offers and altered perspective of the city's skyline in reflection. Nifty.

The Chicago skyline in the Bean (231K)
Self-portrait in the Bean (226K)

Then there are the two brick monoliths. But they are not monoliths, they are fountains and video screens. That is to say the inside facing monolith walls are filled with LEDs of some sort that project the video image of a face. It's difficult to describe, but exceedingly clever. The wall displays the face of a seemingly average person, one suspects it could have been one of the locals picked up off the street, just subtly changing expression until at one point, the image's lips are pursed and water spews out of its "mouth". Very fun. Kids love it and scurry around in the water. Again, it seems perfectly integrated with the city itself, spraying water to counteract the sweltering city heat while displaying the faces of the perfectly average folks who look like the same sort of people walking by at any given moment.

Face in the Monolith (431K)
Spitting Monolith (424K)

In addition to the sculptures, there is a decent open air restaurant/bar which is always crowded and seems like a happening hangout. There's a lot more too; you could probably spend an entire day exploring Millennium Park at a leisurely pace. It has instantly moved into the upper echelon of my favorite places list.

Just to the immediate south of Millennium Park is another of my favorite places: the Art Institute. I suspect I have written about it before, but if I haven't let's just say it remains one of the best and brightest lights of the museum world, comparable to anything NYC has to offer and a perfect place to spend a couple of hours, which I did.

And while we are on the topic of recommended cultural activities, I give top recommendation for the architecture boat tours that are run by the CAF (Chicago Architecture Foundation). You can really get a sense of the sort of thought and creativity that has gone into much of Chicago's development. There's a contrast for you: the "hog butcher to the world" turns out to be long time hotbed of artistic enterprise. It's very easy to see the skyline as just another city skyline, but this tour does a good job of highlighting the decision making process that went into a number of the buildings and how it was balanced with aesthetics. (Interesting note: the doyen's suggestion that the famed Chicago fire that destroyed much of the city actually provided a hidden blessing in that it let them rebuild from a clean slate. Would that contemporary New Orleans took the same attitude.)

A number of tour operators run architecture tours up the Chicago River, but to be on the safe side, I would stick with the ones run by the CAF.

A beautiful city on an ugly day (504K)
Bridge abutments near the Wrigley Building (443K)
The Sears building soars into the clouds (483K)
It's lonely at the top (311K)
Condos for sardines (479K)

There was also a touch of the absurd in store for me. The morning before I left, I headed down to Navy Pier and happened on to a speedboat tour of the lake on a boat called the Sea Dog. I was hoping for a roller-coasterish ride along the Lake Michigan shore, but it was disappointingly gentle. It got even more gentle when the motor overheated and we found ourselves adrift. The crew handled the situation with aplomb, as if they had dealt with it a hundred times before (hmmm...). Another Sea Dog speedboat was called on to tow us in. So onlookers were treated to the sight of two ultra high performance watercraft limping back into port at a snail's pace.

Just another day at Navy Pier (390K)
The garden at Navy Pier (421K)

The entire trip was a mixed bag of fun and disappointment. After most such trips, I would be left feeling lukewarm or mildly frustrated. But somehow, Chicago makes me feel like it was great. I sure wish it was my city.