Craig Stevens <castevens12>'s photostream  

the thing that amazed me most about Chicago was the scale of the buildings. Boston is a large city, but certainly not a mega-city. For every 20 story building in Boston, there was a 50 story building in Chicago. Every 40-50+ story building in Boston was replaced by a 100+ story building in Chicago, such as the Sears Tower (which I'm standing in in this picture), the Trump Tower (right) and the John Hancock Center (left).

Wow.

In this view from the South side of Willis Tower (the Sears Tower) you can see US Cellular Field (where the Chicago White Sox play), Soldier Field (where many people are in the parking lot tailgating for a Sunday Night Football game between the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota VIkings), Lake Michigan and the Chicago River.

This is truly a terrific sculpture and public piece of art. I call it the "bean" but its official name is "cloud gate" in Millennium Park in Chicago. I have many pictures of this work from two different days (It's right in the middle of the city, I hit it twice), but the twilight pictures like this one had way fewer people in it than the daytime (not to mention weekend) pictures from the day before.

Now if only Boston could have pretty things. . .

I also made it to the top of the John Hancock Center in North Chicago (96th floor, at the bar) and had a great time with my co-residents. The view was just as good from here, if not better. I enjoyed the fact that there were a few buildings of the same height or higher so it wasn't just like everything was below you.

The two main buildings in this picture are the Trump Tower and the Willis Tower (Sears Tower).

While in Chicago, I went up to the 'top' of the 110 story Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower), but the observation deck is actually on the 103rd floor. I wonder whose offices are on the 104th through 110th floors?! Anyway, the windows were incredibly dirty from the rainstorm earlier in the day, but some of the pictures don't reflect that dirt and this was one of them.

I look forward to posting more pictures from Chicago!