The Little Red Umbrella Goes To Chicago by Laurie McGregor

Awhile back, we went on a trip to Chicago to check out the city and watch some baseball. We also ate a lot of pizza, and were blown away by how damn cool the city was. Chicago feels like someone really, really loves it, and is dedicated to making it an interesting place to be. We stumbled across works by Picasso and Joan Miro out front of buildings; found a random sculpture of a cow masquerading as Gallileo; marvelled in the unique architecture of all of the buildings; basked in the crazy-electric energy at Wrigley Field; discovered a Bloomingdales in the most beautiful old building...but our most favourite discovery (aside from the pizza...Did we mention the pizza already?), had to be Millennium Park. It’s a huge (24.5 acre!) public park, located in the downtown Loop area of the city, full of amazing things, and lots and lots of grass.

There’s Jay Pritzker Pavillion, a gigantic bandshell that features a whole bevy of concerts, including free shows by bands like Iron & Wine and The Decemberists. There’s Cloud Gate, a mesmerizing reflective bean-shaped sculpture that provides for amazing pictures and ogling. I really wanted to just stay and stare at it all day. There’s Crown Fountain, a two-part fountain that features the faces of local residents...and when it scrolls through to a picture of someone with their lips pursed, the fountain spits at you! Amazing.

In short, we kind of totally fell in love with Chicago. Something tells us we'll have to wait a little while for someone to put that kind of energy and effort into downtown Toronto.

Chicago River

U.S. Cellular Field

The Bloomingdale Home store

LEGO Chicago

Crown Fountain, Millennium Park

Cloud Gate (aka The Bean), Millennium Park

Cloud Gate (aka The Bean), Millennium Park

Harry Caray statue, Wrigley Field

Laurie McGregor is a Toronto-based dilettante. She is the co-founder of The Holy Oak Book Club, a sort-of monthly reading series in Toronto, and seating engineer and curator for Trampoline Hall, a very excellent monthly lecture series. She likes books, soft things, baking, unicorns, robots and has an unnatural love of vending machines. You can find her posts here and email her at laurie@littleredumbrella.com.