Exploring Chicago!




I've traveled to Chicago, Illinois to meet up with Nicole before we travel on to London. Nicole is my sorority sister, housemate and is also in the McBride program at Mines. This semester she will be studying in Gijรณn, Spain. I arrived in Chicago yesterday around lunchtime. The flight itself was much shorter than expected, and O'hare ended up being a breeze to navigate. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of my travels will be this easy! 

Her family's home is lovely, and her parents have offered plenty of travel advice. They have been all around the world, and have the photo albums to prove it. (Me and Nicole had a good time walking down memory lane and seeing some very old photos of her!) Last night we ordered a deep dish pizza and talked to some friends back home. It has been weird seeing everyone else go back to school this semester while  we have been waiting at home!


Today we went into the city and squeezed as much of the must-do Chicago things into a few hours. We walked to the city's museum campus and took in the view from lake Michigan. 


After that it was time to head to Nicole's favorite, Potbelly Sandwiches. We passed about five of them just walking around the city today! We walked across the street into the Art Institute of Chicago and spent our time enjoying all of the art. This included a very specific combination of nodding, acting like we understood what was going on, and making vague comments. 


I did briefly pretend to wear an ancient crown, and I really enjoyed the impressionist exhibit. I absolutely love impressionist paintings. They are fantastic optical illusions, and the artists were able to see the big picture even though they were painting just blurry random strokes. Honestly most of the things they created look more real that a photograph from far away. They capture so much about a particular scene beyond the contents. It really has movement, emotion, light and timing.


The following piece of art completely went over my head, I was told later that it focused on apartheid in South Africa, as part of a much bigger exhibit. I really wasn't meant to be an artist, and neither was Nicole. We had really hard time looking for concrete explanations in a lot of these abstract places. 


We ended our day in Chicago at the bean. It was a beautiful night. We could not have asked for a better January day to explore the city! 







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