No visit to the city of Chicago is complete until one reaches the pinnacle of this building, standing on the glass ledge that sometimes bobs with the wind, and looking through the floor to the street 1,353 feet (412 m) below.
Well, it’s no more called by that old and adorable name, The Sears Tower. Now it’s just the Willis Tower since March 2009 – a tribute to the new owners. However, the experience of going up the whole flight of floors to the observation deck at the top of America’s current tallest building is never any less exhilarating. The experience includes a historical tour of the city’s architectural, human, historical and cultural landscapes, and before we got to the top, we had learnt so much more about the city and the influences of its most famous citizens and residents including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Kanye West, Jeniffer Hudson, Ernerst Hemingway, Louis Armstrong among many many others.
Here’s a new ad campaign that plays on the height of the building in relation to the height of some of the city’s famous figures.
Ask me. “Forget feet, miles or kilometers… the Sears Tower is actually 226 ktravula’s tall.” Go figure.
The trip to the top of the SkyDeck Observatory was not without its thrills, and today I discovered why it was such a thrill to step onto the glass ledge and look down even though we had an illusion of protection from the outside world. Who was the evil genius that came up with the idea of a glass observatory at that kind of height above the ground? We eventually gathered for a few seconds of fright and took the group picture, before we stepped off and headed out through the other way.
I will remember this visit to the 103rd storey of the world’s fifth tallest building mostly because of the way the city/investors take maximum advantage of the landmark for their own financial gain. According to the displayed statistics, the building receives 25,000 daily visitors, and it only has 149 staff members. Considering that the amount spent by each visiting tourist is about $50 or thereabout, it is definitely a good long-term investment, along with returns from several other similar buildings in the city, one of which is the John Hancock Building. One could only wonder how much of returns these buildings/structures would have brought to Chicago if the rights to host the Olympics had been given to them. Now, at places around the city, one could still see little torn posters of the city’s Olympic bid: Chicago 2010.
These photos are some of the over five hundred shots that I was able to take on the streets of Chicago. On the first day, I took almost three hundred. Their locations vary, from the Union Bus Station the Sears Towers, Congress Parkway, Navy Pier, Shedd Acquarium, Chicago Arts Institute to Lake Michigan, Michigan Avenue, Buckingham fountain, and Grant Park.
The four of us who left our little sleepy town yesterday have now landed safely in the bosom of the Windy City. The journey from St. Louis to Chicago only took five long hours on a double decked megabus that offered a beautiful view of the pitch blackness of the road and only a little compensation of little street and vehicle lights. A journey during the day might have given a little more to rejoice for as far as road sight-seeing is concerned. It was something to be thankful for however that it provided a few pockets of sleeping time for us who had spent an earlier part of the evening riding in a private van all the way from Edwardsville. The bus which left the St. Louis Union Station pulled over at the Chicago Union Station a few minutes after six this morning, and we the travellers stepped into the cold wind with gigantic buildings blocking our view of the beautiful morning sky.
We are Reham, Audrey, Mafoya and I: two males, two females; three Africans and one French; two Fulbrighters and two International students; two and a half speakers of French, one of Arabic and one and a half of Yoruba; one moslem, an atheist, one Christian and one composite. In short, a United Nations of sorts. We have so far visited a few fun places, and as I lay here typing after a long day, I don’t know just where to start. The day had definitely been fulfilling, from getting lost on the streets, to getting shoved within a crowd of busy pedestrians going and coming without a discernible pattern of intentions. From becoming the centre of attention on the corner of a busy street because of a heady insistence to consult the large city map right there to the long, pleasant ride up into the Sky Deck observation area of the Sears (Willie’s) Tower to get an aerial view of the whole city, and to learn more of the very much cultural import of this city that has defined America in more ways than one. From a long walk on Adam’s street coming from the magnificent Sear’s Towers to the enchanting awesome experience of the corridors of the Art Institute of Chicago – an experience of a lifetime that requires a long post of its own. From sitting at Starbucks on an early Friday morning observing people getting their morning beverage ritual to returning home tired at night to this five star hostel that had put up no big public sign of its name and had got us a bit wandering. From the ups and downs of this exhilarating day, here we are, bushed from a day on a town that never stops demanding, yet bubbly with a kind of sweet miserableness.