04/02/2023 - Anika's asside

 Written by Anika While Mom was Blogging downstairs (edited by mom)

Chicago: An Introduction

There's much to say about the city known as Chicago. The heavy industry surrounding the place is smothering yet when the eyes fall on it, they marvel. Whether this is horrible for the environment or not, nobody can disavow the spectacle that it is.

The same can be said for the stunning suburban sprawl. As I crossed the Chicago Skyway and looked upon the ground, I almost thought it was an ocean. Small houses pressed together in too-small lots, cars cramming the already narrow streets between them. Yet the houses were different so they weren't insufferable to gaze upon.

This "ocean" was occasionally broken by an ancient church steeple or a home that was a story or so higher than its neighbors. The stunning rusty thing that was the railway was running parallel to the skyway on the left. It almost looked as though rusty fingers were curling over the tracks to grasp desperately at any passing train. The tracks ran for miles and miles, I studied these too, an unmatched grin filling my face.

These sights were everything, and my awe only grew as the city itself came into sight. The sky had been clear and blue once but over the city it was gray, the clouds crawling down to rest atop  Sears Tower, tendrils stretching further down to the lower buildings that still looked to me as monstrous in size compared to my home city of Richmond.

Bridges overhead prevented a clear view of the skyline for miles yet my eyes drifted from the larger buildings to favor the smaller, older buildings that occasionally made themselves known.

Soon that ended and we rode the winding ribbon that slithered through the city center and around the edge of Lake Michigan. The buildings were boxy, made of brick or glass and steel, yet the sheer size of them was enough to make me gape.

People skated, biked, walked, walked dogs, practically any physical activity you could imagine along the shore of Lake Michigan.

It was flat concrete up until the sandy beach which then transitioned into docks where a few motorboats were seen, parked and shining. The sailboats' colorful sails pulsed with the wind further into the water. The Ferris Wheel and a domed building sat on a dock of their own. I returned my gaze to the road just on time to see a hulking beast of a building, cylindrical in shape.

Soldier's Field, the building itself stood out as it was but as we drove further, I saw the marble columns standing inside what almost looked like a large scale porch entirely made of marble. Stunning, could a football field really be able to have such a masterpiece of architecture be a part of it?

Answering myself I knew, of course it can, this is Chicago, it's shocked you enough already as it is.