Bermudian Doug Jones looking over Chicago
From wandering past a large eye-ball statue to imbibing a Bermuda-based drink, Bermudian resident Sam Strangeways and her boyfriend, Doug Jones, explored the highs (from the Willis Tower) to the lows (deep-dish style) of Chicago. Here Sam shares Chicago in the latest installment of Bermuda’s Postcards:
Ever noticed how Bermuda – tiny dot that it is in the middle of the sea – manages to leave little reminders of itself all over the world?
You can be in the unlikeliest of places on a desperately needed get-away-from-it-all vacation and still spot an obscure vestige of island life.
Hence why I shouldn’t have been at all surprised to see, in the sophisticated heart of Chicago, that Bermuda had worked its way onto a snazzy (and slightly pretentious) cocktail list.
Actually, it was the Drawing Room’s cocktail waitress who was, perhaps, a tad pretentious, albeit initially very friendly.
Bermuda is on the drinks' menu!
We’d found the North Rush Street basement bar and restaurant by chance after watching a hilarious musical version of The Breakfast Club on our second night of a long weekend stay in the Windy City.
After heading out of the theatre into the unknown and largely deserted neighbourhood of Lakeview, we hopped in a cab and hightailed it back to the centre of town.
Nothing could have been less pretentious – or more fun – than pH Productions’ adaptation of the classic 1980s John Hughes’ film about five wayward high school students.
So we were in pretty high spirits when we stumbled, starving, down the steps of the Drawing Room – and met (allegedly) the world’s most knowledgeable cocktail waitress.
She presented us with a vast, dazzling grin and a gigantic menu of gorgeous-sounding cocktails before telling us about the venue’s Master Mixologist (I had to suppress a giggle there).
“I expect you’ll have a lot of questions about the drinks and I’ll be more than happy to get the answers for you,” she said, a little sternly, before heading back in the direction of the bar.
I turned to my boyfriend. “I have no questions,” I whispered.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “Except: how do I get a drink and some food in this place?”
Then his face suddenly lit up – Bermuda, his beloved homeland, had come to the rescue.
Nestled in the list of alcoholic delights was a beverage named a Port Royal Fizz, with ingredients including Gossling’s (sic) Black Seal rum and ginger beer.
“It’s basically a trumped-up Dark’n’Stormy, bye!” he snorted. “How cool is that?”
We were ready with a barrage of questions by the time the waitress returned – was it named after the golf course? Had the Master Mixologist been inspired on a trip to the island? – but, I’m sorry to report, we got no answers.
Our waitress – the same woman from five minutes before – looked vaguely irritated by the queries and said she had no information on the origin of the drink.
“Have you decided what food you’d like to order?” she said primly, shutting down discussion on the Port Royal Fizz.
We may never know how a bastardised version of Bermuda’s national drink made it to Chi-Town.
Anish Kapoor’s stunning Cloud Gate
But I can advise that it tasted pretty good, like everything else we had at the Drawing Room, which provided us with culinary delights, including delicious deep-fried guacamole, and plenty of laughs.
That was more than could be said for Uno’s Pizzeria on night number three. I’ve never been one for guide books but I bit the bullet and followed a recommendation for the “best Chicago-style deep dish pizza” in town.
Being a huge lover of Italian thin-crust pizza I knew this was a risky move – and so it proved.
To be fair to Uno’s, a cosy restaurant on the corner of East Ohio and North Wabash, it may well offer the finest version of this beloved city staple.
It’s just a shame that, to my mind, Chicago-style deep dish pizza totally sucks. Chicago gets so much right – breathtaking buildings, amazing public art, a thriving theatre scene and really nice people – but it has got pizza so, so wrong.
Picture a pie crust covered in thick tomato puree. Now picture eating it. I couldn’t and left Uno’s with a rumbling tum.
Champagne in the Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the John Hancock Center helped fill the hole.
No mention of Bermuda on the cocktail list here – come on, that would have been too weird – but the late night view of a million twinkling lights across Chicago and beyond more than compensated.
The great thing about the John Hancock Center is that you get to see this spectacular sight just by jumping in and out of an elevator and ordering a reasonably-priced drink.
There are more laborious methods, as we found out the day before, on a visit to the 110-storey Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower.
We queued for a long time to get to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor – at least an hour-and-a-half. But it was worth the wait and the $16 entry fee.
I’m scared of lots of random things but, happily, not heights, so I danced about with glee on the glass Ledge positioned on the building’s east façade, 1,353 feet above street level. Not so my boyfriend, who eyed the glass box rather more gingerly.
Still, he made it out onto the Ledge of the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and second tallest building in the world – no mean feat for a mild acrophobic.
A second view from The Willis Tower
The Willis Tower, completed in 1973 and rising to 1,450 feet, highlights for me what is great about the talented, ambitious citizens of big American cities – they make stuff happen. And, often, it’s really cool stuff, like this Chicago icon.
They hear about a tall building somewhere else and say: “We can do better than that.” And they do.
It doesn’t always make the US popular but it ensures their vast urban centres are very exciting to visit.
Chicago is just that way with its 552 parks, 33 beaches, nine museums, two world-class conservatories, 200 theatres and vast number of public works of art.
I think the latter – even more than the dazzling sky-high views and tasty cocktails – were my favourite thing about the city.
Random eye-ball sculpture
From Anish Kapoor’s stunning Cloud Gate sculpture in Millenium Park to the random 30-foot eyeball we came across after stepping off the “L” train at the corner of State and Van Buren streets, there was so much to see and enjoy.
Best of all was the Crown Fountain, also in Millennium Park, which consists of two giant video screens projecting images of the faces of Chicagoans and spurting out water.
Watching the delight of scores of young children as they skidded in and out of the fountain waiting for the next blast of water was fantastic, smile-inducing, free fun.
Frank Sinatra once sang about Chicago: “I will show you around – I love it.”
I couldn’t agree more. Anyone fancy a trip to the toddling town?
- Travel info: We travelled to Chicago from Bermuda via Newark with Delta and stayed at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel.
Robyn's Wanderings 