It’s a good month to go to Chicago: not yet so dreadfully cold as to keep me indoors, and hotel prices have gone down!

November 26, 2022 – Downtown Chicago decks out for Christmas. One thing you can always count on is a huge Christmas tree in Water Tower Square. Adam, one of the photog friends I hang out with in Chicago, polished this big silver ball with his sleeve before we took our selfies. Sadly, I didn’t quite manage to get our reflections in focus, but I really like the photo anyway.

That’s the Water Tower behind us, a Chicago landmark that sits at 806 Michigan Ave. It was built in the mid-1800s to house water supply equipment, hence its name, but its real claim to fame is that it survived the great fire of 1871, even though the area around it did not. Today it houses an art gallery on the first floor and stands as one of the interesting architectural sites of Chicago. And today it is also surrounded by good restaurants, upscale shopping, and often a variety of buskers performing in the square, from musicians to jugglers and more. Well worth a visit!

November 10, 2023 – It’s another Chicago landmark: the Kinzie Street Bridge. It used to be just one of numerous draw bridges that must be raised every spring and fall to allow the tall sailboats belonging to Chicago residents to travel down the Chicago River and out onto Lake Michigan. But it carried railroad tracks only and when the last plant east of the river that relied on the railroad moved out in about 2000, the bridge was raised and remains so.

So now its a landmark, and a delight to this photographer’s eye. Look at those greens, how the greens of vines and lichens on the pier posts and graffiti’d initials draw the eye across the photo! Look at how the accents of warm orange, surprising pink and stark, bright turquoise jazz it up! Look at how the dark purple of rusted steel and the pale yellow of the massive concrete counterweight and the off-white of the controllers shack create a context against which the greens and accents can do their thing!

Or is it just me? 🙂