Discover Chicago

Part of our reason for going to Chicago this time of year was the St. Patrick’s Day celebration on Saturday. They started the process of turning the river green at 10am with fire boats spraying this green liquid from hoses into the river. We boarded the architectural boat tour, which sounds, on paper, like the sort of educational activity one might politely endure but becomes instead a slow drift through a canyon of buildings, not only learning about history but enjoying the beverages and snacks offered. What we couldn’t believe was that while we were boating along the river, it started to snow. Huddled up together, the guide talks—dates, names, styles—but what you notice is how each person on the boat is just enjoying the views, and the excitement of the crowd that screams and dances from the shore, celebrating this big Irish holiday. The water is green in a way that feels intentional, especially because it is—Chicago’s annual ritual of dyeing the river for St. Patrick’s Day transforms it into something halfway between civic pride and unreal spectacle. People cheer for it, which feels right. It’s not every city that insists on turning its whole city into a holiday. What lingered is the impression of a place that has rebuilt itself repeatedly, each time with greater intention, a history written in steel.

St. Patrick’s Day itself is less a day than a saturation point. Green everywhere—hats, beads, beer that looks faintly medicinal but is consumed with a kind of collective shrug that says yes, we know, but also this is the point. The river is the centerpiece and is dyed a shade of green so vivid it looks like it might glow in the dark. The crowds—bundled, convivial, faintly inebriated—lean into the cold as if daring it to matter. You find yourself

carried along, less participant than someone just a part of this celebratory current, all heading to the parade.

As we wandered through Millennium Park the next day, it offers a different register. There is the famous mirrored sculpture (“the Bean”), reflecting a skyline that seems to multiply endlessly, and the wide, deliberate spaces that invites hanging out while William grabbed a hot dog at a nearby stand. The area has the curious effect of making everyone around it behave like delighted tourists. You see yourself, the skyline, and about eighty-two other people all at once, which is mildly disorienting and exciting, depending on how long you stare at it.

The museums shift the tone again that day. The Field Museum is vast in a way that makes you conscious of your own scale, moving from fossils to cultures to exhibits that attempt the impossible task of summarizing entire swaths of history. You walk a lot, which you soon realize will never get you to visit all the exhibits, so you decide to focus on a few, the dinosaurs and the T-Rex Sue being the focal point of our trip. The vast halls and exhibits remind you how small your own timeline is. You move from ancient bones to cultural artifacts as though centuries have been folded out in front of you.

The Art Institute, meanwhile, is the sort of place where you pop in thinking you’ll have a quick look and emerge several hours later, slightly dazed and wondering where the afternoon went. This museum holds a special place for us because of my grandfather who donated several of his collection of photographs to the museum many years ago. You wander through the museum, noting the paintings you never knew existed here, making a point to snap a picture of your favorite, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. The paintings inspire and slow you down, no longer feeling the need to rush along.

Food becomes both anchor and reward on this trip. We went The Dearborn on our last night, which felt so relaxed, each dish rewarding us for a long day walking around the city. After dinner, we stopped at Molly’s Cupcakes, with William taking full advantage of the swings that hover next to the counter, rocking back and forth. Molly’s offers sweetness that is almost aggressively cheerful, frosting and flavors you couldn’t believe they created. The first night we ate at Kindling, a restaurant William could not be happier to eat at because one of the chefs he sees on TV owns the restaurant. It leans into its theme with enthusiasm, fire and flavor presented as a kind of performance with bundles of firewood spotted all around the open kitchen, getting ready to be dropped into the grilles to cook our meals. The restaurant is housed in the Willis Tower (the Sears Tower for most of us). All the way to the top is the Skydeck Chicago, which is less about height (though the height is undeniable) and more about perspective. It offers panoramic views from the 103rd floor. You step out onto the glass ledge and experience that brief, involuntary recalibration of trust—your body unsure whether to believe it can

possibly venture any closer to oblivion. Below, the city rearranges itself into abstraction: grids, lines, motion reduced to pattern. It’s the closest you get to understanding Chicago as the city it is. While our day was not the clearest, the striking fact is that all reports say that you can see up to four states while you hold on for dear life from the glass balcony, referred to as The Ledge.

One stop we had to make, and usually it is to stay for a night was at the Palmer House. We finished the night in the atrium of the Palmer House where we had a nightcap and enjoyed the beauty of the incredibly towering ceilings. You sit where countless others have sat, adding your brief presence to a longer narrative. And then we closed our last night back at our hotel, enjoying our walk back through the chilly brisk night, happy to get some rest and recall all the fun we had on this trip. It is a city that invites you to look up—at its buildings, its skyline, its improbable feats of engineering—but also to settle in, have a good meal, and watch the world go by. And if the wind happens to rearrange your hairstyle in the process, well, that’s just Chicago’s way of making sure you remember it.

While not every moment can ever be truly captured in this post, the joy of showing William just a few parts of this city only made him wonder at the end of our trip, “when will we be back”. I have a feeling next time; it will be for a baseball or hockey game if William has the choice, and let’s be honest, he usually does.