Rhodes Traveled: Chicago

After a superb trip to New York City last spring break, three members of McCallum journalism headed up to the mighty Chicago early this November. Chicago may have less than half the population of New York, but that by no means detracted from our experience.

We landed in Chicago around 1:15 on Thursday afternoon. It was about 50 degrees and cloudy, which is pretty typical weather for that time of year. As we rode toward the city in our taxi, we could see the skyline in the distance, and what an impressive skyline it was. To the north was the 875 North Michigan Avenue, better known as the John Hancock Center, and to the south was the Willis Tower, formerly called the Sears tower. These buildings are about two miles apart, and that distance was filled with a wall of other buildings so dense that we couldn’t see the lake just behind them. The place we were staying was called the Swissotel, which was only a few blocks away from the hotel complex where the journalism conference and award ceremony we would be attending was held. The Swissotel was right on the river and just off of the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue, so we could see some famous Chicago buildings, like the Wrigley building, Tribune tower, and the DuSable bridge.