Today's photos one new on the video page
Today got off to a really good start when Jane won $1000 bucks on the lottery so the first thing was to get a down into The Loop to collect the cheque. We hadn't planned on coming down here today buts it's no problem to swap things around so after a little bit of digging we found out you can collect the cheque from the Thomson Building which seems to have most of the federal government offices in, to get to the upper levels you need to go through metal detectors and have ID with you so that meant Jane taking her passport. I didn't fancy going through all the hassle of getting in so waited down in the lobby area which is more of a small shopping mall.
It turns out that you have to pay tax on your winnings but as the state of Illinois is skint they would tax you on breathing of they could find a way of metering it, so $1000 becomes $700 then you are charged $12 for cashing the cheque but we still had more money than we started with.
From there, we walked down towards the centre of The Loop, this area is mainly
the financial part of the city so there's lots of tall glass buildings and fancy plazas with fountains out the front that made for some good photo opportunities.
We stopped off at Wendy's for a coffee and cheese bacon fries, which were lovely, before heading over to have a look at Calder's Flamingo. I'm not really sure where the "Flamingo" comes into this but then again that's works of art for you, isn't it? It was constructed in 1973, stands 53 foot tall and is located in Federal Plaza, it's been used as a backdrop in lots of movies and TV shows over the years. There was a mention of it being moved but public opinion seems to think otherwise about that. These sort of things seem to be hated when constructed but become firm favourites after only a few years.
As luck would have it the post office is next to this place so it's was a good
opportunity to get some stamps. It turns out they are the 2013 stamps which were what we got in San Francisco the other year so they mustn't have been a big seller. Now we went on down to the Federal Reserve Money Museum for a look round, this is a bit of an odd place to go into as its as its inside a federal building but when you go in there are no signs to tell you where to go just lots of security and you have to go through metal detectors as well. Still, it was worth it and you get a free bag of money that has been shredded. I even got my photo taken next to a million dollars in 1 dollar bills. I thought it was interesting to see how money is made and what the lifecycle of it is, there was also a part where you had a spot which bills were fake.
Now it was lunchtime and as we hadn't planned on coming down this way today I hadn't had a chance to have a look at places to eat. By chance we came across dinner called Luke's Italian beef sandwich shop, it's a rough and ready sort place with good low-cost food, these places are hard to come by in the heart of the financial district.
Then it was time to move on to the Willis Tower which is the tallest observation
deck in the northern hemisphere at 1353 feet above the street or 103 floors up, it takes the elevator 60 seconds to the Skydeck Ledge.
At the top the view is amazing even though it wasn't a sunny day, the main attraction to coming up here is the Skyledge which are glass pods that stick out of the building so you can look down the quarter of a mile to the street below, there was more than a bit of trepidation before walking out onto it but you soon get used to it so took the ultimate selfie at 1353 foot up.
I'll probably never be any further up than that unless I'm on a plane. After spending about an hour and a half up there we were back at the bottom then headed into the Red Line station and got the train to Wrigleyville near Wrigley Field again as I forgot that there was another sporting shop there but this turned out to be a waste of time in the, at least it was only a short walk from the station to it.
By now my back was killing me so it was time to call it a day and go get some tins of beer and snacks for the evening.
