Quote:
Originally Posted by jolinar of malkshor
Thanks for the posts, I am taking my wife to the Tina Turner concert at the beginning of October in Chicago. Will be checking out the Sears Tower of course.
|
If you have to pick one building to go up, go up the Hancock. Way better view, smaller lineups and they have this meshed off outdoor little deck you can go on. Also lots of cool history tidbits up there. I did both, and while if you have time for both I'd recommend it, the Hancock is definitely superior. The Sears tower is a big part of the view, and you can't see the Sears tower when you're in the Sears tower
I'd stay near the loop or Michigan for sure. Ride around the loop on the train and check things out. The Navy Pier is cool, but pretty dead in the Winter. If you can survive the blustering winds to make it all the way to the end you get a really cool view of the city.
The Aquarium is all indoors and really really good. Not far from downtown either, a quick train ride and a walk gets you there. The Zoo is free, but I never made it there. The Field museum kind of sucked, unless you like stuffed dead animals.
The old water tower (not sure if that's the right name for it) was one of the few buildings to survive the fires and is really cool.
Ask about one of the good local deep dish places. We have no idea what deep dish is supposed to be like here... Grab a steak somewhere nice too.
People will tell you it's not safe to go to the United Center via public transport, but I found it to be BS. Cabbed it there, but took a bus back and felt completely safe. It's a really good arena and I'd love to see it with more than 9000 people in it, which you will be lucky enough to experience. I'm hoping to head there again this November.
Oh yeah, and getting to O'Hare sucks, and O'Hare itself sucks. We took a cab to the airport from downtown at 6am on a Friday morning. Going away from downtown traffic on the Don Ryan stopped dead. The airport terminal was completely full of cars and jammed as well. The lineup for security was all the way through the terminal and there were only two xrays. We missed our flight and so did pretty much everyone in line around us... Try fly through Midway.