Chicago by air and river

To Island Airport by cab. Porter Airlines very nice and professional, but it was a prop plane which chugged through the cloud a lot of the time, which I didn't particularly like.

Chicago grey and rainy when we arrived at Midtown airport. Toby given his traditional hard time at US customs, having to field annoying questions like: 'so, they teach English in Canada, do they?'

To the Ritz Carlton by cab. The clump of enormous buildings downtown seeming a bit disappointing from afar, until you got amongst them. Passed Navy Pier and the W hotel, which is the only part of Chicago I knew from my business trip several years ago. Pulled up at the Ritz Carlton, and was warmly greeted. Swanky and cool hotel. Lorraine and I have a wonderful room on the 20th floor.

After a half an hour crash out, Toby, Lorraine and I made our way up the Majestic Mile, grabbing a sandwich before making for the new Millennium Park park.

Two stunning and monumental works of public art there. The Crown Fountain, Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and made of fifty foot glass towers. A reinvention of fountains. Stunning stuff, and using the faces of people from Chicago. Then an Anish Kapoor piece called Cloud Gate, which was fabulous, and completely made up for me being underwhelmed by his work in Brighton earlier this year.

After this, the wonderful Romy had booked us onto an architectural river boat tour. Toured this amazing vertical city, the birthplace of skyscrapers.

Back to the hotel. Lorraine and I met Toby in the bar and we drank some mohitos, which were a new drink on me. Then off to a noisy tapas place to meet up with Romy, Gillian, Gillian's cousin Simone and her housemates Nori and Maria. We all ate gargantuan amounts of Spanish food, and drank sangria. I felt rather well oiled by the time we returned to the hotel.

In between all this meditating on the unnaturalness of these skyscrapers. It seems to me to be a triumph of trust in human ingenuity over common sense, that people are willing to live 50 stories in the air.

Below a scene from the boat trip, me Lorraine and Toby reflected in the Kapoor, inside Cloud Gate, and the amazing Crown Fountain.