Chicago is a fabulous city, but not in the winter. I don’t understand why the city, which experiences severe winds and storms, is completely unprepared every year when the snow falls.
The weather was lovely when we arrived in Chicago, but we knew a severe storm was arriving overnight. We took the opportunity to walk about in the city around the South Loop. Overnight snow came. It is a blizzard form. We woke up to snow blowing horizontally.
The story goes that Chicago is known as The Windy City not because it’s windy but because, in the early days, politicians were considered full of hot air by Washington. Hence, they were called Cities.
It turns out that the blizzard and snow unexpectedly changed the temperature drastically, and the snow turned to rain with massive puddles everywhere, so we took this opportunity to spend the day at the Chicago Museum of Art instead of being outside. I usually can stay maybe two hours at a museum. The Chicago Museum of Art is fantastic and has a massive and broad collection of art from all errors and artists. We spent five hours there, even though we stopped twice for coffee and then onion soup.
Quite a few people seemed concerned about the weather, and I checked out the theatre to find out that some cheap tickets were available for Hamilton. I had wanted to see Hamilton while we were in New York, but the tickets were just out of range here. We paid $50 each, and while it was up on the balcony, I think the seats were terrific; these seats easily go for about $150 plus under normal circumstances, but turned out to be quite full as many people took advantage as our neighbours did besides us of picking up tickets that day.
Hamilton is an extended musical. I can understand how accessible it is because of the style of rap and modern music. Well, it was not interactive. Many of the audience had seen it before and participated in an odd way.
We were only spending two full days really in Chicago. Because the weather was so unpredictable, I wasn’t prepared to stay longer. After all the snow had melted overnight it dropped in temperature and I do mean dropped by the time we left Chicago the following evening. The wind chill factor was -24°C during the day. It was bitterly cold, and everything was a block of ice,
Knowing that there wasn’t much we could do and that the most beautiful thing about Chicago was the architecture, I did book an architectural boat tour for us. I stayed inside the whole time, and Louise did manage to go out occasionally to get a proper view of the buildings.
We returned from there to pick up our suitcases, an Uber, and off to the train station.
There’s so much of Chicago that we didn’t see, but if you can go, I recommend taking the architectural boat tour. If you love art, you must also go to the Chicago Museum of Art.