Chicago

My accommodation for this one is the Freehand Chicago, a hostel which is trying to ride that line between Hostel & Hotel.
In practice, this means that there’s a coffee place and cocktail bar on the ground floor, an ensuite bathroom in every room and towels which are replace approximately daily, 4-bed air-conditioned dorms with non-squeaking non-shaking wooden bunks & privacy curtains, and a general feel of very carefully designed bohemian charm.

It’s in a 17-story building, so the stairwell (yes, there’s a lift or two, but it was often faster to walk down) is impressive.

At one point during the stay a letter appeared in the room to lket us know that they were upgrading the door lock system, and that we’d need to get our prox-cards re-keyed at some point. I wasn’t sure when that point would be, exactly, and got a false alarm when my card no longer worked in the elevator, but that turned out to be because I’d extended my stay.
This was how I knew;

Also; It’s worth mentioning that the prox-cards themselves were fun.

There were, over the time I was there, a range of room-mates, from India, Sudan/Oman/Canada (one guy), Sweden, Germany, USA (briefly, she moved rooms after only a few hours¹), and Germany again.

¹ We (A woman from Germany, the second German to have that bunk, and I) did get concerned that she’d shown up, grabbed her bag from her bed (she’d left it there earlier, when I was the only other one in the room) , and left again with a “see you later”, having asked about locks for the lockers. Then never showed up again.
If something had happened to her outside of the hostel, with her gear with her, be it foul play or bad luck, it could be a really long time before anyone knew she was gone. It’s the big downside of travel & transient roommates, I think.
I enquired when I checked out, and it turned out that she’d reported that there was something wrong with the bed², according to the hostel management system, so she’d been moved to another room.

² I’m wondering whether it was more of a ‘something wrong with the room-mates’ issue.
Could be that she’d not realised that she’d booked a mixed dorm.

Soooo, Chicago.
I tried for a shot with the Chicago Tribune building in the background.
Managed it, but it’s not like the lettering is as readable as I’d hoped for.

Said building has stones from all around the world, and in at least one case not from this world at all, embedded in it.
There’s no specific mention of the stones having been made off with while nobody was looking, but it’s a fun thought; Valiant reporters nicking stones under cover of darkness, and smuggling them back to their HQ.
But to what sinister end?

And could these be the poor unfortunates who returned stoneless?

Well, no.
They’re outside a completely different building.

I decided to re-visit the Field Museum, and because I’m dim, I walked there.
On a hot sunny day.
In jeans.
Because I’m clever.

As such, the very energetic fountain (which can be seen in one of the boat trip photos I took) was a welcome break from the heat; That mist plume goes a really long way,

There were many things to see in the museum, including Terracotta Warriors, a soil’s-eye-view of … well, soil, and a 3D movie about Sue the T-Rex.
Who has definitely spotted those people.

There was the finest cuisine Chicago had to offer.

There’s Navy Pier, which … Is basically an elongated food court with a convention centre at the end and a big-ass ferris wheel on top.
I met someone from Austin, TX, at the free breakfast in the hostel who was in town for a gardening convention on Navy Pier, and had ended up at the Freehand because a room was cheaper by far than any of the nearby hotels.

The Illinois State Flag is rather letting the side down here; Stars & Stripes and Chicago flag are doing their bit for visibility, and Illinois … not so much.

The building out there is not a mirage, magical faerie pavillion, or in Michigan; It’s the intake structure for the water supply, placed far out into the lake in an effort, back when this was more of an issue, to have less of the city’s output in it’s input.

And there is one hell of a view from the end of the pier, looking back, if you can get the light right.
I’m pretty happy with this one.

I did a bunch of wandering around; Never did use the metropolitan rail system.
Thanks to it being as humid as all hell, sticking to the shade became important, so river walkways were my friend.

This cake, I’m assuming, marks a battle between an experimental submarine and a previously unknown species of giant freshwater octopus, presumably out on Lake Michigan.

I’m guessing it happened during one of the two World’s Fairs they had here, and which are represented on the flag with a red star each; No point in doubling-up on the stars if they happened at the same time and were related events.

This was mentioned during a boat trip I took;
The city ran the 1933 World’s Fair for two years. It was the Depression, and the thing was bringing in people and money and jobs.

Originally, the fair was scheduled only to run until November 12, 1933, but it was so successful that it was opened again to run from May 26 to October 31, 1934.
The fair was financed through the sale of memberships, which allowed purchases of a certain number of admissions once the park was open. More than $800,000 was raised in this manner as the country came out of the Great Depression. A $10 million bond was issued on October 28, 1929, the day before the stock market crashed. By the time the fair closed in 1933, half of these notes had been retired, with the entire debt paid by the time the fair closed in 1934.
For the first time in American history, an international fair had paid for itself. In its two years, it had attracted 48,769,227 visitors.

Then there was the day it rained.

This was very exciting; There was even thunder & lightning.
Some of this I heard, and some I saw, when it became apparent that the dickhead in the bunk under mine was just going to keep hitting ‘snooze’ on his cellphone alarm, so I got up.

It was raining a lot; I got … not quite soaked, but in the ‘do I need a dry shirt?’ territory, by walking 2½ sides of a block while trying to stay undercover.

The day I visited “The Bean”, sometimes known as the Cloud Gate.
It’s fantastic for taking self-portraits, as many people here are demonstrating.

Another day I wandered along the Magnificent Mile, to see what it was.

Here’s a hint; There’s a bunch of shops.

At the end of it, however, there’s a beach, which I wasn’t expecting.
Or particularly dressed for.
You can’t see it in these pictures, because I was mostly going for “what a nice day”, but trust me, there was sand, people swimming, people pushing each other off the edge you can see there, a beach bar, …

This building?

I photographed this because of memories of all of the McGraw-Hill titles various co-workers & I shifted, ordered, sourced, and occasionally sold, while working at bookstores.

Looks like this is the only photo I took of the Freehand Hostel, and I think I was trying to photograph the retro ice-cream truck on the other side of the intersection.
Anyway, it’s the dark brick building with the circles & quasi smiley faces on it.

Here’s the lock between the Chicago River & Lake Michigan.
There was constant upflow from somewhere inside that area with markers around it, which I’m guessing will have to do with the operation of the lock.

While I was down in the area (waiting for my boat trip, and also sorting out the Kalamazoo trip, by which I mean “going with the much better ideas of friends”) I found a map of Chicago.
The Freehand is in there, on Ohio Street.