How could I not love Chicago, when the first Chicagoan to speak to me (the guy collecting the Skyway toll) praised Speranza’s beauty, asked politely if he could take her photograph and sent me on my way with the compliment above?
I was lucky in my guide to the city. My host, whom I first met when we and our wives lived and worked in Poland, knows the city well having lived there most of his life. I drove around much of downtown Chicago under his guidance; seeing more in a morning than most tourists ever would. He is a proud alumnus of the University of Chicago and we spent some time driving around its various buildings.
We also took the Chicago Architecture Foundation boat tour. My host is a trustee and glossed the official guide’s commentary as I took hundreds of photographs.
It’s a magnificent city. Not only are there impressive buildings in interesting contextual relationships, but the spaces between them are better arranged and managed than in most places. Not only the public parks, the sculptures and monuments, but also the relationship between the city and the enormous lake on whose shore it lives. Chicago embraces Lake Michigan and Lakeshore Drive allows residents and visitors to admire both the lake and its city.
I loved Cloud Gate, the 100 ton sculpture by Anish Kapoor in the Millennium Park. So does everyone else. I have never seen a public sculpture with which people so loved to engage. The whole point of it seems to be that you see in it the city in which it stands and the people relating to it. Once you have taken it in, you stop seeing it and start seeing what it reflects.
In the evening I had coffee with one old friend and dinner with two others, one of whom is here to hire a Corvette and follow me on the Great River Road section of my journey.
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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