So I caught a train up to Grand and walked down to Navy Pier reasonably in time for the 11:30am architecture tour departure. Our guide was Kevin, a guy who talked veeerrry quickly and also sang for us at the end. And played the harmonica.

The Pier itself, a trendy riverside development of shops and amusements, located scenically next to a water treatment facility.

Chicago has a ton of interesting architecture, from the first wave of skyscrapers, to the modernist boxes of the 70s and 80s, to today’s post-modern towers. It also features the Merchandise Mart, an absolutely friggin’ huuge building. It wouldn’t even fit in one photo. 4 million square feet, 372 km² of floor space. 

Having concluded the tour, I proceeded to purchase an ice cream after standing in a queue behind the slowest two women on the Earth. “Hmm. Does he want… ketchup?” “…I don’t know. Maybe. Perhaps we should get ketchup, just in case.” “Okay.” “Also, may we have another hot dog, but with mustard?” “Also make that other one with ketchup too.” 

Chicago has quite a lot of beach, which is surprising, but makes sense given the proximity of ole Michigan.

I wandered up north to the Magnificent Mile, Chicago’s premier shopping district along Michigan Avenue. At the Water Tower mall I browsed seven levels of shops and a large area of Macy’s before finding a handy little travel shop and getting a new bag together with some very handy sealable airtight bags.

Also, an advert for Fiji Water made me angry. America has made a surprising effort towards going green, although their solution to global climate change appears to be something along the lines of replacing their gas-guzzling, 20 mpg SUVs with biodiesel-guzzling, 25 mpg hybrid SUVs. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome start.

But when Fiji Water are running adverts bearing a picture of the product, a photo of Earth from space, and the legend “A convenient truth.” or “Earth protects Fiji, and vice versa”, I get a tad annoyed because this is a company that transports plastic from China to Fiji, uses six kilograms of water to manufacture each 1-litre bottle, fills them up with supposedly “high quality” Fiji spring water, and then ships the bottles from Fiji to the US and the rest of the world, producing 250 g of carbon dioxide per bottle. Oh, and guess where all those bottles end up? Not making homes for polar bears, that’s for sure.

Rant over, we move on to the John Hancock Centre, offering reasonably good views over Chicago, especially when the weather is nice, which it wasn’t today.