Preview: Some of the best things about Chicago in the Summer Time
Posted on 24 March 2008, at 11:06 am, by Molly Antos
On these, the first days of spring, the first rays of true sunshine have started peeking through the buildings in downtown Chicago. So I thought, what better way to celebrate than to look ahead to even warmer weather and all the wonderful things that come with it!
What follows is a list of things that I love about summers in Chicago; so if you live here, try them. If you don’t, come visit, and I’ll do them with you!
photo courtesy of Virtual Tourist
1. Cubs Games (of course!): Even though going to a game in April means taking the chance on being snowed out, it’s a great time to start planning for those summer Saturday day games and even weekday games when you might accidentally (oops!) call in sick to work. I guess the White Sox are ok too, but their field is not nearly as historical or majestic.
2. Street Festivals: Whether you live in Lincoln Park, BuckTown or the Gold Coast, you can bet that you are in close proximity to at least a street festival per week over the summer. With themes of all kinds (everything from food to music to art), it’s like celebrating Fat Tuesday every seven days.
3. Chicago(land)’s very own Vineyard: Blue Sky Vineyard (only open since the summer of 2005) offers the wine connoisseurs of the MidWest something to look forward to. Whether you love wine in a bag or deeply inhaling the soulful scent of a deep Merlot, this is a great and different idea for summer time!
4. Ravinia: This is the ultimate summer getaway. With an amazing lineup of well known artists from all sorts of genres, Ravinia is more than just a concert venue. It has wonderful restaurants, beautiful picnic grounds, scenic natural beauty and usually a good crowd to keep you company.
5. State Fairs: I guess this isn’t specific to Illinois, but one of my all time favorite things about summer is the multitude of state fairs. Even if you don’t like country music or tractor pulls, the deep fried food (Oreos, Twinkies, vegetables) should be enough to get anyone looking for one of these.
6. Lake Shore Drive: Bikers, joggers, dog walkers, drivers – everyone can appreciate the view on a clear summer day on LSD. Not to mention, there are quite a few stretches of marvelous beaches that are enough to allow anyone to believe they are somewhere tropical.
7. Taste of Chicago: Obviously cliché, but honestly, if you can stand the heat and the crowds, you have got to try it at least once.
8. Pierogi Fest: Now, granted, this is technically in Indiana, but it is absolutely worth the trip. Words cannot describe how amazing it is to be surrounded by pierogis (and all sorts of other wonderful Polish foods) for an entire day of temptation.
9. Navy Pier, Millenium Park, Buckingham Fountain: These are all wonderful Chicago landmarks that get a little gray in the dead of winter, but are lovely to see when the waters of Lake Michigan are shining.
10. Lincoln Park Zoo (or Brookfield Zoo): Any zoo will do! Warm weather is a great time to get back in touch with Chicago’s wild side.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Molly, I have only been to Chicago twice - and both times were for business - but this makes me want to take a vacation there.
Thanks for the list of must-sees…although this line did make me laugh:
Kids, don’t try this at home.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I agree. Chicago just rocks. I was there twice last year. Once in a snowy February and once in June. I had a MUCH better time in June, but I enjoyed both times. February was nice just to see snow. However, now I am tired of it (we had 20 inches 2 weeks ago…it’s all gone).
FOOD is the BEST thing in Chicago. First The MUST TRYS: Chicago Style Hot Dogs, Chicago Deep Dish (NOT Pizzaria Uno) and Chicago Italian Beef.
Then there’s all of the OTHER things to try….Garret’s Popcorn and other things that you can only find in Chicago.
Plus walking around Millennium Park is a fantastic walk. The Cloudgate Sculpture is a cool thing to take pics of during a nice sunny day.
I want to take the family there, but I am having a rough time convincing my wife it would be a fun vacation.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Personally, having spent about 12 years in Chi-town (including one year working downtown); I can take a pass.
I can’t stand all the crowds; and while the food is VERY good, its freakin’ expensive!! If you go downtown, you really have to keep an eye on your wallet (costs as well as pick pockets!), and your kids.
If I didn’t think that Chicago’s IT market was more recession-proof than Nashville’s, we never would have left.
March 24th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Expensive? I thought it was cheap. The best thing about Chi-town was it was so easy to get anywhere at least that was my thought. I’ve been to places where I had to get on a bus to get a decent cheap food option. I had a class in Dallas, TX and there was a hotel nearby, but the only good nearby was a Au Bon Pain and the hotel’s own restaurant. I had to hop a bus to get to a Whataburger or anything else.
March 25th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Today - opening day - is a great day for me because my beloved Cubbies could be in first place by day’s end.
March 25th, 2008 at 8:38 am
My earlier post didn’t. So here is the rest of my thoughts on the Second City.
I lived in Chicago (Bucktown) from 1993 through 1996, when I left for Rhode Island to marry my ex-wife.
I have lived in Cleveland, Columbus, Providence and San Diego as well and visited cities as far flung as Paris, London, Tokyo and Moscow.
Chicago, in my experience, is about the best place on the planet.
There is so much to see and to do and, most importantly, the people are really nice. I loved it!
San Diego is a close second for me. It’s very Midwestern in friendliness, but with Palm trees.
If you visit Chicago, you have to get up to the Bucktown neighborhood for a meal at Janes or Club Lucky.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Having grown up and spent most of my adult life in Detroit, I spent a fair amount of time over in Chicago (only about 5 hours by car). I liked it, in general, but the traffic was horrible, and Chris S. will be happy to tell you how I cussed out more than one toll booth for making me pay to drive on a roadway that was pretty crappy.
The tourist things in Chicago are pretty nice though and Chicago’s tourism department does a nice job pushing it, especially regionally, as a tourist destination.
Detroit has many of the same amenities, like a world-class Art Institute (which holds a Van Gogh and an amazing Diego Rivera mural), but it has a much poorer tourism department and continually has to fight the “crime” image which really is a shame becasue the crime rate is similar to other large cities that don’t have that image.
The bottom line is that you can find treasures almost anywhere you live and/or work and it amazes me how few people appreciate the ones that are local to them until they either have visitors asking about them or they leave an area.
I loved the food in Detroit and Chicago. Now that I live on the U.S. Gulf Coast I absolutely love the country cooking and the many, many, different inexpensive foods available in New Orleans. You gotta take advantage of what’s around you!