location #5

Okay... since one of my New Year's resolutions is to be a better blogger, I decided that perhaps I ought to finish up this series of posts which I started... oh... what... two and a half months ago? :-)

This was our final location of the day....

The Tribune Tower

This is definitely one of those buildings that I totally took for granted. Sure, it's a cool looking building and yes, I've been past it a million times (in fact, I once had a temp assignment in the building next door years and years ago) BUT I had never actually looked at the building.

If I had, I surely would have noticed the numerous stones set into the building...
The one above is from a Revolutionary Battlefield in New Jersey.

And the one below (also from NJ) from where Washington landed after crossing the Delaware...

Then there's this brick from Holland from the house the Pilgrims used as a church before making their voyage...
Also, if you look really hard...
... you'll notice that the carvings aren't typical carvings.... there are dogs with glasses, alligators, monkeys and who knows what all else. These all have meanings and thankfully a lot of them are outlined in the book we bought at the gift shop.

The whole building is like a huge game of I Spy...
You'll be amazed at what you will find there.

locations 3 & 4

Once we crossed Michigan Avenue... we headed for this Chicago landmark...

Cloud Gate aka "the bean"

We never get tired of going to the bean... to see the city reflected in it is just amazing...

(can you spot us in the photo above?)

After that we started across the bridge to the brand new...

Modern Wing at the Art Institute

I took just one additional photo here...
... the troops were rebelling as it was getting dangerously close to lunch time.

However, our last location made them forget all about lunch (at least for a little while).

Location #2

Here is the photo from the original post...


Did you guess that he was at the Chicago Cultural Center?

Well... that was where we were. We trekked across the loop to get there. Can you believe that I have never, in all of my years of living here, been inside the Cultural Center? We walk past it all of the time, but have never been inside.

I really wish we would have had more time.... especially now when I realize that we didn't actually see the Tiffany glass dome we went there to see... sigh.
What we actually saw was the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Dome.

Oh well... we'll just have to go back!

Here are the kids in the GAR Memorial Hall...
The next stop was just a quick trip across Michigan Avenue!

Location #1

So, remember a month ago when I wrote the post "Where in Chicago is Alex?"... yeah... I had forgotten about it too. But perhaps that was partially due to the fact that I had a little contest for people to guess the locations and nobody played along... sigh. :-)

Since I've been slacking with taking new photos, I have decided to share some more of the photos we took that day and reveal their locations.

Location #1....

The James R. Thompson Center

Many years ago I used to work near this building. There's a food court on the lower level and I used to go there for lunch with coworkers. I can honestly say that I never really looked at the building before the day the kids and I went for Alex's poetry class.

We sat in the main area and just took it all in...
curves and angles...
... all of the glass and reflective surfaces.

One of Alex's favorite things was the elevators.... he loved that you could see all (most?) of the mechanics of them and was fascinated by watching it all work.

Alex wrote down several adjectives to describe the building and then we were off to find location #2.

Where in Chicago is Alex?

Alex is taking a homeschool poetry writing class with the theme of "building poems". They had a homework assignment recently... to solve several clues to identify several Chicago landmarks and then go and visit them. We're running a bit behind on this assignment but managed to get out this morning to visit the landmarks....

#1

(no clue why he posed like that)

#2
#3
#4
#5
There was one more on our list, but Alex visited that one with his grandfather over the weekend. They visited the Hancock Building but those photos are on my point and shoot and I'm too lazy at the moment to download them.

Anyway... we had a great time and it was a BEAUTIFUL day out... I just wished we had had more time to explore... oh well... we'll just have to go back!

I'll have the answers later!