Quick Business Trip to Chicago

What a busy month – I have plans every weekend and often during the week till literally June. It started with a quick 2-day business trip to Chicago back in mid April and will continue until I get back from my trip to Cuba at the beginning of June.

I did manage to shoot a few pictures while in Chicago. Here are some highlights of the trip. I was actually in town for the GSMI Social Media Strategy Summit – where I learned a lot, was inspired and took lots of notes! After the day’s events ended though I took my evenings and walked. I did not have a car but I was staying on beautiful S. Michigan Ave. at the Essex Inn – which I found for under $100 at www.hotels.com! It was well worth the money and somehow I lucked out and got a great corner room on the 8th floor where I could see the Willis Tower out on side and the roof of the Field Museum and Lake Michigan out the other side.

My first free evening I walked to Willis Tower. I had been once, back in 2005 when it was still called the Sears Tower, but I wanted to return to check out the “Skydeck” balconies they had since added to the 103rd floor observation floor. I was not disappointed and got a great view from up there… looking STRAIGHT DOWN those 103 floors! I won’t bore you with pictures of the beautiful Chicago skyline but you can see pics in my Chicago Flickr album.

So that was the 1st evening… on the 2nd evening after the workshop I headed up S. Michigan Ave. to Millennium Park to see the Bean, er, Cloud Gate. I has also seen it during my 2005 visit but did not realize that I saw it when it was still being completed… I saw it with scaffolding around it which I recently found out was because they were polishing the seams in the sculpture. So I wanted to see it in all its glory. I was a little late getting out to the park but it was actually great timing because I was able to photograph it at dusk when the sky was a beautiful twilight blue and the buildings were lit up. I took tons of pictures as it got darker but below is one of my favorites:

And finally, on my last day I had a few hours before I had to head to the airport so I did a very very quick run through the wonderful Art Institute of Chicago. Wow, I was drawn in to the galleries as I walked by… it was very, very hard not to spend more time there. They have an amazing impressionist collection and they had many of my favorites in there – Renoir, El Greco, Van Gogh, John Singer Sargent, Frank Lloyd Wright, Chagall…

And then I had to head home,,, inspried by great art and by a great conference!

You can see ALL of my photos from the trip by clicking on the slideshow below: