Chicago the Windy City – Day 1

Before anyone asks where is Day 2 of the WeddingStory Langkawi trip, I decided that I definitely wanted to post up some other photos of my recent trip to the US. Back in May, I flew to the States to attend a training in Chicago for a week where I planned a short break after the training session. Since I was already at Chicago attending the training, I thought it would be great to stay a couple of nights in Chicago with a bunch of my colleagues over in the City whilst taking in the sights.

The bus ride from St. Charles all the way to the city was horrendous. We were stuck in traffic for about 3 over hours for what should have been a 45-min bus ride. By the time we arrived in Chicago, it was already 5pm in the evening and we had little time there to enjoy the sights.

Chicago City itself, home of the mafias and also known as the Windy City.

This is a view from my hotel room. The building next to the hotel had a very interesting concept, it was totally round and had built the parking lots below the rooms. Look at the parking spaces, there are no walls at all! I can’t imagine parking my car there overnight. I would probably be having nightmares about my car falling off from the building.

Chicago has a river running through the city where they have plenty of water taxis and Architecture tours available for tourists to ride up the Chicago River. Look how nice and clean the water is much compared to our own wonderful Klang River which runs through KL City. The secret to this is not only civic minded folks who don’t throw every single bit of rubbish into the river but they actually have a processing plant to clean the river’s water.

Before I went to Chicago, a friend of mine, CWCW, told me that I have to try a deep dish pizza. After checking out with some of my colleagues during my training session, I was told that I should check out Giordano’s for some of that awesome deep dish pizza. I guess Giordano‘s is sort of like those franchise type stores, much like Domino’s or Pizza Hut.

As it’s name suggests, this pizza is definitely a thick crust! The pizza is so thick that after 3 slices I was totally filled up to the brim, of course the extra added cheese did not help at all. The crust itself isn’t like the usual pizza crust you might get but it had a combination of pie crust in it. If you ever are in Chicago, I would highly recommend that you try out a deep dish pizza.

After stuffing ourselves crazy (with plenty of leftovers), we decided that a nice long walk would be suitable and since Grant Park was nearby we headed there for a walk. As light began to disappear, shooting in low light was going to be a tough challenge. The weather itself was just awesome, nice and cooling without any hint of humidity.

As we were walking, we chanced upon this interesting monument. I love the fact that it was rather stylish and interesting, mainly because it was totally reflective!

Which means I could take a photo of myself!

I loved how the syline of the buildings behind were also reflected on it the monument.

This was the skyline of buildings behind it.

After snapping a couple more photos, we headed towards the Sears Tower where the attraction there would be to head up to the upper decks or the “Sky Deck” to catch a 360 view of the Chicago City.

The one thing that caught my eye is how straight the roads were! Everything is so nicely planned out.

The SkyDeck definitely showed us all how large Chicago is. By the time we got down (we stayed till it was closing time), we were totally wiped out and proceeded back to our hotel.

Day 2 of the Chicago trip to follow up!