We headed downtown this morning with our son Alex and his girlfriend, Sara.  They were going to Wrigley Field to watch the White Sox, so we dropped them at the Lake Street CTA station to catch the Red Line to the field.    We figured we had about five hours to kill until they returned so we decided to spend our Date Day in Chicago.

Chicago Bridgehouse Museum

Our first stop was the Chicago Bridgehouse Museum.  The museum, which opened in 2006, is in the southwest tower of the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River.  The entrance to the museum is at river level, while its fifth floor stands well above Michigan Avenue and sports a great portal of a window for viewing.  Each floor of the museum has a different exhibit that chronicles the growth of Chicago, the importance of its river and the development of its iconic bridges.  We learned that the bridge was the first double-deck, double-leaf, fixed trunnion bascule bridge ever built and that it was conceived by Danial Burnham in 1909.  The bridge opened in 1920 and quickly became the main gateway between Chicago’s north and south sides.  In 2010, the bridge was renamed in honor of Chicago’s first permanent resident, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, whose homesite borders the northern end of the bridge.

It’s worth spending an hour or so in this museum.  If you are lucky (we weren’t) and are there when the bridge is being opened or closed, you can even get a look at the gears, counter weight and cables that control it.  The museum is only open from May to August and is generally closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so you may want to plan ahead if you are going to visit.

Chicago Riverwalk

When we left the museum, we decided since we were already on the Riverwalk, we may as well explore it a bit.  This was our first time and we were impressed.  Heading west from Michigan Ave, we passed several restaurants and a surprising number of kayakers before we got to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  The Memorial, dedicated in 2005, is pretty cool and we never knew it was there.  Next, we headed to the Floating Gardens.  This is a project being developed by Urban Rivers to bring back native plants and wildlife to the river.  It’s an already impressive array of plants and grasses and makes the walk along the river more visually pleasing.  We even saw a few groups of children fishing amongst the plants.  We don’t think we would eat anything quite yet, but maybe someday.  Continuing westbound, we reached the end of the Riverwalk and found Tony Tasset’s giant deer sculpture.  The 12-foot-tall deer is a great place for a photo but will sadly only be in residence until October.

Leaving the river behind us, we made the 1.5 mile trek to our chosen location for lunch, Bistrot Zinc. 

Once we achieved our caloric goals for the day – French food is great, but not exactly low-calorie, we headed off again.  We roamed through the Gold Coast for a bit, looking at the houses for sale and debating if we should live in the city.  A quick online check of prices and we decided to move on.  We headed south down Michigan Ave, a great place for a summer stroll, and reconnected with the eastbound section of the Riverwalk.  This portion of the walk, from Michigan Ave to Lakeshore Drive is a little grittier than the westbound walk, but nonetheless charming in its own way.  It is also the pickup and drop-off point for many of the tour and rental agencies.  If you want to kayak, grab a boat ride or rent one of those super annoying 4-person bikes, this is the place.  We stopped for ice cream along this part of the river, but the service was bad, and the ice cream was expensive.  We wish we could remember the name, so we could NOT recommend it.

The last part of the walk, if you are heading east, is the Riverwalk Gateway.  This is where Lakeshore Drive crosses the river and where you find an amazing 127 foot trellised, cast-concrete walkway.  The walkway itself is beautiful, but what puts it over the top are the 28 ceramic panels that line the walls.  These panels, designed by Ellen Lanyon, depict episodes in Chicago’s history and are not to be missed.

At this point we were six plus miles into our walk and the White Sox game had just ended.  We decided to head over to the Park Grill in Millennium Park to wait for Alex and Sara.  Forty-five minutes, and a few text messages with directions later, we met up with the kids and enjoyed a cool drink.  A quick walk to the Bean for a picture ended our day.  We headed back to the car with over seven miles behind us and a wealth of memories to take with us.