Chicago Green
- dolliemcdonald
- Feb 5, 2023
- 10 min read
Updated: Jul 19, 2023
Watching the city of Chicago turn green with envy was definitely on my bucket list in my life's travel adventures. I had been to Chicago about 4 or 5 times before this trip. All during the month of December for the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic in previous years, but not another season, other than winter. Which BTW, during the Holidays Chicago is great to visit, but bring your parka, and gloves and hat! You have guessed it, my family was tired of hearing about all my travels to Chicago without them in previous years, so for March 2019, our spring break schedule just so happens to coincide with their St. Patrick's Day festivities. "Hey family, do you want to go on this trip and watch the city turn green, see all the things and fall in love with Chicago as much as I have in previous years ?" "Yes, Mom, please!" Ok. Boom! Let's do it. Down the rabbit hole of travel planning I go!
We flew into Chicago on Friday, the day before all the St. Patrick's Day festivities began. Just in time to kick off the weekend and eat a nice dinner at the pub Kitty O’Shea’s and check into the Chicago Hilton downtown. In doing all my research for booking a place to stay, the Chicago Hilton was very affordable and I highly recommend visiting Chicago in some of the shoulder seasons such as February/March or October/November for great hotel prices. Perfect for our bucket list o'trips! The temps during our stay were in the 30's & 40's and with plenty of sunshine. We made sure we brought our coats, and it was pretty comfortable with all of the walking around and moving across the city
Saturday morning of the St. Patrick's festivities is like waking up on the morning of your birthday! Wake up! Let's go! When fun is on the agenda, I am anxious to get out the door. The day awaits us with adventure and laughter! After getting fueled with coffee and breakfast, we walk down Michigan Ave and head towards to the Chicago River to watch the dyeing of the river.
A tradition added to the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day festivities in 1962, this is definitely a fun event to watch. The crowds gather around to watch the green dye squirt into the river from a few boats and the herd of kayaks go around to help the green mixture settle in. Sort of like dyeing cream cheese frosting with food dye in your mixer, you keep stirring until you get to that ride shade of green.
Next, we walk over to find a spot along the St. Patrick's parade route, which for us, was near the Buckingham Fountain area on the north side of Columbus Ave. We got there about 2 hours early to get a good spot to see the parade. A must do because the crowds are incredible. About 800,000 people gather for this parade & festivities!
We are standing around in the sea of onlookers just waiting and waiting some more. Then suddenly you hear the echo of the bagpipes coming down the street! Louder and louder, they are coming for us. The beginning of the parade arrives with the Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band. The largest band of bagpipes I have ever seen! The bagpipes move through the streets, and the sound moves through me. So loud and thunderous you cannot hear yourself think. The band moves through me like a huge ocean wave, knocking me down with one swell!
The parade experience is truly spectacular. If you are into parades and big bands, it will give you chills as it gave me that day. The parade lasts about 2 hours and then we walk towards Michigan Ave towards the Willis (aka Sears) tower. Downtown streets are shut down to motorists for the festivities, so there are people everywhere. There is a sea of people behind me, in front, all around, thousands and thousands of people. I hold onto my girls tightly, so they are not swept up in the wave of people. I think to myself, this is what it would be like during a Zombie apocalypse and be left to our devices to roam around the city, LOL! It was surreal to be walking in the middle of the streets of Chicago with skyscrapers all around us.
After making our way through the sea of people in the streets of Chicago, we arrived at the Willis Tower, aka Sears Tower for those spectacular City and Lake Michigan views. I had been up this skyscraper a couple of times before, so I was so excited to bring my family here to check it out. We bought a City Pass for visiting some of Chicago's main attractions and Willis tower is on the list to visit.
Side note at Willis Tower: they have a clear glass floor you can walk on. My paranoid mom self would not let my kids nor myself near that section. I love going up skyscrapers and gravely afraid of heights. Weird, I know. I enjoy the views but when I get near the crazy clear glass floors, or anything that gives that extra vertigo moments, I can go from having fun to freak out in about 5 seconds!
After all of our fun with the river green, parade, Willis Tower and walking in the Zombie Apocalypse sea of people, it was time for some REAL FOOD. I mean some deep dish, gooey mozzarella for days Chicago Pizza! I didn't walk those 20,000+ steps, be out in 35 degrees most of the weather for nothing. Whatever calories I burned was getting packed back on these curves 3, 2, 1! Traveling and being a tourist is hard work, so we had to treat ourselves! OMG, that first bite and a sip of your beer of choice after having so much all day, the best feeling! There was much laughter and eating had by all with this family meal. After all that eating and nice long day, we grab a cab and head back to our hotel for a great night's sleep. Another fun day awaits!
The next morning, we head back down Michigan Ave to find breakfast at coffee shop on the way to the Chicago River. An architecture river tour is on the agenda this day. The river is still green from the day before and this tour is excellent and I highly recommend whenever you visit Chicago. You get a great overview of the history of Chicago and great recognition of all of the architecture in downtown.
The architecture river tour lasts about an hour and half, and it is with Shoreline Sightseeing Tours. Check out the link of my Chicago Itinerary at the end of this blog and on my Trip Itineraries page. I list and link all of the places during our trip and you won't regret booking this tour! After our river tour is done we grab some sandwiches and head to the Chicago Children's Museum. We have a full afternoon planned with our friends, The McCambridge Family, that live in the Chicago area. I have been friends with Carolyn McCambridge for over 20 years now, thanks to our fabulous college band sorority, Tau Beta Sigma. Carolyn has daughters that just so happens to be around the same age as my daughters.
Carolyn and I lined up the afternoon for the girls to have some interactive fun at the Chicago Children's Museum, play around at the Navy Pier and then end the day with festive St. Paddy’s Day dinner. The Children’s Museum is a must do if you have kiddos. The Museum has alot of fun interactive activities, crafts and, you literally could spend all day there, doing all the kids things. Our girls loved it!
This outing was a great way to get to know their new friends, with my great friend. Which if you ask me is special! The Navy Pier is stacked full of fun stops to spend the afternoon with a large Ferris wheel, The Centennial Wheel, multiple shops, restaurants and fantastic views of the Chicago skyline. Both McCambridge and O'Neill families took a turn on the Ferris wheel and let our girls run out all of their young energy all up and down the pier. Which begs the question: where do these kids get all of their energy? With a full afternoon of activities and probably another day of 20,000+ steps, they are all magically getting their second wind! We watch the sunset from the pier and get a few great photo ops of our girls and vow to bring them back in a few years to remake
these moments in their teenage years. And hopefully they see what I see, they have friends and connections all over and you never know where your budding friendships will take you. Finally, after a full afternoon of playing around the Navy Pier, everyone is hungry, and we stumbled upon the D4 Irish Pub & Cafe on East Grand Ave. t a yummy way to end another awesome day in Chicago with our friends.
If you find yourself near the Navy Pier and want a great Irish Pub to pop into, this is it! Dinner and atmosphere were fantastic, especially for St. Patrick's Day. Sadly, after our dinner we say goodnight to our friends, off to our hotel we go, and we are all fast asleep after another day of great adventures in fabulous Chicago.
The next morning, we started the day with a 'Big Bus' double decker bus tour of Chicago. I highly recommend doing these types of bus tours if: 1. you are new to the city and 2. if the weather is nice. You can see the city of choice in 2 or 3 hours with hop on and hop off rides and learn so much history in 'one fell swoop.'
Next, we went to the Shedd Aquarium for the afternoon, which is sure to be to enjoyable for all ages! A must do when in Chicago with your kids. We ended the day with sunset city views, appetizers, and cocktails for Mom & Dad at the Signature Lounge in The John Hancock Building. The Signature Lounge is family friendly and will be become a fun memory of "remember that time we had drinks and snacks in the
tall building overlooking Chicago?" Yes, girls, I remember it all too well. The next day, instead of rushing through a coffee shop for a quick breakfast, we treated ourselves to breakfast at Chicago Waffles. Ya'll have got to make it a point to have breakfast in this spot! Waffles and bacon, Waffles, and Chicken, or just all sorts of Waffles galore, this is a great breakfast/brunch stop must do while in this city. We went to the location near the South Loop of Chicago since we were going to spend the rest of our day in this area. First stop after our amazing breakfast, The Adler Planetarium! Built in 1930, the first Planetarium in the United States. The architecture design of this building is unique and beautiful, ahead of its time, if you ask me.
Your time at The Adler will fill your mind with wonderful mysteries of Science and Space. This hands on and interactive museum will be one of your favorite spots, while on your visit to Chicago, trust me. Next up after The Adler, we go next door to The Field Museum, with a quick mid-day stop in between at a Hot Dog stand. Bonus to hold us over til dinner. If you get the City Pass for Chicago, schedule a whole day to visit The Adler
Planetarium and The Field Museum together. Those two will easily take up one day. You could squeeze in the Shedd Aquarium in the same day, but that is ambitious, and we opted for more time with each these great museums, knowing we would want more quality time in each. Which proved to be the best decision to allow more quality time in these museums,
The Field Museum is the natural history museum and one of the largest natural history museums in the world. You could easily spend all day or multiple days here, if wanting to soak up every inch of this place. We opted for half a day and see as much as we could in one afternoon. There is simply so much wonder to seek out and learn. By far the highlight of this visit was seeing "Sue" the Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found, at over 90 percent recovered by bulk. It was discovered on August 12, 1990, by American explorer and fossil collector Sue Hendrickson. We were fascinated of the history and the modern day find of this dinosaur that boasts being 67 million years young. Go visit Sue and check out her natural physique!
After we finished up our afternoon and closed The Field Museum, we headed to check out the landmark "Chicago Bean" for a fun photo op. AKA as "Cloud Gate" located in Millennium Park, you can get creative with your videos and photos for all of your IG posts. This so happened to be on the way to meet up with another friend of ours, Alli Dietz for a delicious Italian dinner, located at Italian Village.
We opted to spend our final day in Chicago to spend at the Museum of Science and Industry. We opted to spend the full day, because we had heard that this museum was huge, and filled with multiple floors of exhibits and was amazing. We got lost literally and metaphorically in this museum, and it felt great to simply get lost and consumed. There was so much to experience and see. This Museum
is so huge, it has over 2,000 exhibits and 2 of them are super huge: 1. U-505 Submarine, in just one wing on one level and 2. Pioneer Zephyr train in another section of the museum. Being WWII history buffs ourselves, we spent a lot of our time of the submarine and learning of the history that surrounds this one exhibit. I was so glad we carved out this whole day for this museum, we gave it our all to see the whole place. We put a good dent in our exploring, but we did not get to every section. Our goal is for one of these days to go back and see the sections and areas that we missed. Every trip has so much to see and our goal in our travels is to do our best to scratch the surface and vow we will always come back.
In reflection of writing this blog 4 years after the trip, it creates this travel nostalgia of traveling in 2019 before 2020 hit us. Looking back, it was certainly blissful to be able to take this trip, enjoy all festivities and crowds. Chicago couldn’t have the St. Patrick's Day festivities back until last year in 2022 after canceling 2 years due to covid. Traveling before 2020. Traveling after 2020. Interesting how much travel changed from
2019 to 2021, 2022 and beyond. I was so thankful we took this trip as a family and enjoyed every minute of every experience we had. Perhaps this is a reminder of how I should look at travel with my family. Enjoy every minute. It really does come and go in a flash. Reserve that table, meet up with that friend, order your favorite drink, snap a picture, hug your babies and take that dream trip!
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