Along another river

Last time, I told you about some stupendous natural architecture along one of the rivers that I traversed in August.

Some architecture of the man-made variety was on display along one of the others...

Thanks to a recommendation from our newest niece-in-law, we took an architecture tour of the Chicago River during our visit to that city. And we loved it!

As you'll see in these pictures, we had a gorgeous morning, weather-wise, and got to see some amazing buildings. Believe me, I had quite a chore in narrowing down the number of pictures to include here; I wouldn't want to overload Blogger, after all  .

You can see a little of our mode of transportation in the picture above, but we found it interesting that some of our fellow tourists chose a different type of boat to navigate the river...

Maybe next time we'll take this option...we had enough fun that a return visit sounds very appealing.

Our guide was entertaining and incredibly informative; however, I hate to say that I probably didn't retain as much as I wish I had of the fascinating information he gave us about his city and its buildings.

But even the buildings I can no longer identify were so cool... like this one:

or this one...

or this one...

And as you can see from this brief sample, there were all sorts of styles on offer, from the ornate to the slick.

I do remember some tidbits about some of the structures, though. For instance, the architect of these guys wanted every surface rounded, because "there are no straight edges in nature":

And the handsome black, also curvy, building on the right here (and you can also see our great guide in this shot as well) was built where it is because of a loophole in the building code that has since been closed...

It was built on the Lake Michigan side of Lakeshore Drive, where such buildings are supposed to be prohibited, but since it was built on "landfill," instead of "land," there it is. The ordinance has since been clarified and this is the only structure so close to the Lake. We heard all kinds of interesting and quirky Chicago stories like that. So fun!

Of course one of the buildings you can't mistake is the Sears Tower (which is apparently now the Willis Tower, but that doesn't have quite the same ring). You can just see its antennae peeping out a bit to the left of the landfill building above. And here's a bit closer look at it and its neighborhood:

We heard that they are working on a continuous walk along the riverside (hmmm...I wonder where they might have gotten the idea for that?). It should end up being a wonderful walkway, especially since they have, at least in recent historical terms, shown a lot of respect for the river. 

One building that we saw which exemplifies this connection was this beauty:

Not only are the reflections of the buildings across the river a great free decorative element (and this was planned) but the graceful curve of the river-side of the structure exactly echoes the curve of the river at this point. Our guide told us that on the street-side, the building's facade is perfectly flat; it's only when you see it from the river that you can appreciate the real artistry. Very imaginative and cool!

Of course, Chicago is more than just architecture. And we got to sample many of its famous sights, sounds and tastes, from museums to deep-dish pizza (not our favorite style, but we did try it). And of course there's the L, which we enjoyed riding with our 3-day-passes.

Here's a shot I took on purpose of some more gorgeous buildings, with a train in front for scale and perspective...

What a great city! I'm so glad we got to see as much of it as we did. The tour we took with Wendella is one we'd recommend to anyone visiting Chicago...especially if it's for the first time!