Chicago (五), The first franchised McDonalds

Naoko wanted me to post something about this topic, so there we go!

Nowadays, everybody knows what McDonalds is and all it represents... they have many supporters and detractors. However, I will try to keep some distance with respect to my personal opinion and just describe what we visited in Chicago.

McDonalds was founded in 1940 and was based at San Bernardino, California. This restaurant was quite famous in the area and a business man called Ray Kroc decided to take over the restaurant and open a corporation composed of many franchised restaurants. Following this idea, he opened the first franchised restaurant of the corporation in Chicago. Therefore, it can be said this restaurant started McDonalds such as we know it these days. This is the current aspect of that restaurant:



Inside, there is a museum, well... just a few display cabinets with stuff from the corporation since the very beginning, together with an explanation of its history.



Here, some examples... These are some of the early cardboard glasses they used to use back in the 50s-60s.



And this is the first Ronald McDonalds... obviously, aesthetic values have changed quite a lot in 40 years... most kids would be currently scared by such a clown!!



And finally, the original plans for the building of the restaurant. As you can appreciate, the original shape in the 50s is different from the M-shape it has these days.

Chicago (四). Dinner at the 95th

One night we went for dinner to the coolest restaurant in all Chicago. It is located in the 95th floor of the John Hankock Center, the fourth tallest building in the US. The food was pretty good, but as you can possibly imagine, the main point of going there was enjoying the breathtaking view.





We asked for a table as near the windows as possible and if possible with view to the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the city and in the US.



This is the view of downtown Chicago with the nice view of the Sears Tower clearly outstanding in the skyline.



A closer view of the buildings around the Sears Tower:



This is the view of the lakeside. As easily appreciated, the lake area in black greatly contrasts with the lights in the city.

This is the other part of the building, looking out of town. There was a beach there, in that area.



And finally, after the dinner and once we were alone in the restaurant (we were the last customers leaving :), we had to come back downstairs... 95 floors in around 50 seconds... a fast calculation makes it 0.5 second per floor! We could even notice the change of pressure in our ears!!

Chicago (三). Lunch at Ed's

In Chicago, we also discovered real American food. One example was Ed Debevic's. This place was quite interesting. The place itself looked like taken from a movie in the late 60s and so were the waiters. Another funny thing was they tried to be rude with customers. It was normal to have your waitress come and shout in your ear: "Fast, eat it up and leave!!" They also performed some shows with music played loud in all the restaurant or started arguing, yelling at each other. It was full of American culture items... ejem... this is movie stars, some famous company items, the american flag and music related people. We also had to wear the funny hats you can see below. We took hamburgers, which were really good; nothing to do with McD. We also had one of the better things we tried in the US, bowls of chili. Basically, it was chili con carne with some extra ingredients such as cheddar cheese or macarroni. For some dollars, we had real fun and enjoyed nice food (yes, burgers can be nice food when the meat is alright)

Have a look here! Naochan's burger was with sandwich bread and with bacon and avocado!

Chicago (二). Millenium Park

One of the nicest places in Chicago is a park called Millenium Park (sorry, the article in Wikipedia is only in Spanish). There are many artistic expressions, such as a concert pavillion, fountains, sculptures, small gardens, a nice bridge...

The funniest place is a sculpture which has the shape of a water drop and whose surface is a mirror. The result is everything reflects and mirrors in the surface and due to the strange waterdrop shape, the angles are strange and cool compositions of images are created...





It is also nice to free your artistic spirit and take nice photos ;-)





Another place to highlight is the concert hall there. It is an open-air pavillion with some cool arcs and live classical music. The atmosphere is really nice: you are lying on the grass under a beautiful architectural piece and listening to classical music played by an orchestra.

Chicago (一)

Well, after almost one month without talking about my trip with Naochan to the US, I will write a bit about our 4-5 days in Chicago. I will not follow a log-wise style as I did for NYC, but I will deliberately be more chaotic ;-)

Well, today i will put some photos of the area around the Tribune Tower, one of the coolest buildings in Chicago, and some of Chicago style pizzas. If Chicago has to be defined in one word, it should be ARCHITECTURE. Buildings are so beautiful! In 1871, one third of the city was burnt by an uncontrolled fire and all the financial district had to be built from scratch. That makes most of the buildings very modern.

Chicago is also the city of Blues. There are many live shows in pubs and houses of blues downtown. Besides, here the first controlled nuclear reaction took
place thanks to the work of Enrico Fermi and others.

Well, here you have some photos...

The first one is the Tribune Tower, the building of the famous newspaper "Chicago Tribune". This is the beginning of a trendy shopping area called "the Magnificent Mile". Our hotel was in this area, and so was the conference hotel.



Next to the Tribune Tower, the Chicago river comes from Lake Michigan and gets into the city. The area which is the end of the Magnificent Mile and the beginning of the Loop (financial area) presents many beautiful skyscrapers and bridges over the emerald blue river...



If you continue walking along the Magnificent Mile heading North, you will arrive to our hotel, the Water Tower, John Hancock Observatory... This is a building next to our hotel.



And this is the view of the Water Tower from our bedroom...



One of the most typical things in Chicago are Chicago style pizzas. In my opinion, they are more like pancakes than like pizzas... The pizza base is more than 1 cm thick!!! The toppings are like in any other pizza, but with too much of everything ;-) That's American style :)



In this restaurant, you can also see why Chicago is the city of blues. Have a look at the picture of the Blues Brothers.





That's it for today!