Monday, August 6, 2007

Tall Ships and Tall Buildings: Chicago 2007

Chicago; the city of tall ships and tall buildings. After our visit the last week of July, 2007, we learned it is also the city of great steakhouses, deep pan pizza, Cubs baseball and hotdogs at Wrigley field, and oddly enough, a city that hosts the "Houndstooth Bar", an Alabama Football Memorabilia restaurant/bar, right in the middle of Wriggleville.

Click here to see the Chicago weekend pictures. http://picasaweb.google.com/cstewartphotos/TallShipsAndTallBuildingsChicago

Jimmy Jones, one of my old highschool buddies, and I re-acquainted with each other after way too many years, and to our surprise, we found out that we still had a lot in common. Our wives act like twins, we still love Alabama Football and Baseball, and Jimmy still has salt in his veins and a love for boating that I knew about even when we were in High School. Our first yacht was a mail-order canvas canoe kit that we built in highschool. We took our wives on a long weekend to Chicago and stayed in a quaint little vintage hotel, the Talbott (built in 1927) and since refurbished to a nice 4 star boutique hotel right in the middle of the shopping district on Rush Street and Delaware. It is one block from the magnificent mile on Michigan Avenue, and just blocks from Navy Pier. There we saw two of the City's tall ships, the Windy, a 148 foot four masted schooner, and the Windy II, a 148 foot barque rigg. I love the history of the old sailing ships!