It’s all hot air

New York – > Chicago
2.5 hrs
712 miles

This week has been non stop, even more so that usual. On Monday I flew to Chicago for a business trip and had the pleasure of staying in the beautiful Peninsula Hotel. Although it was a very short visit I managed to visit the John Hancock Observatory, go for a sunrise run by Lake Michigan, and take a couple of photographs of the fantastic Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park (also known as The Bean). I love this sculpture and it looked even better in the early morning, free from tourists with the sun shining on it.

Chicago makes me think of gangsters, the prohibition era and cold, snowy winters. But one thing I didn’t know was where its nickname, The Windy City, comes from. I presumed it was related to cold winds blowing from the Great Lake across the city. But it seems there are a couple of other possible explanations. The most interesting is that it comes from boastful, corrupt politicians. After the fire in 1871 much of the city was destroyed and a period of rapid rebuilding followed. Chicagoans were extremely proud of their new city and allegedly claimed it was better than New York. However, its likely that the name does actually relate to the wind from Lake Michigan. The ‘cool breeze from the lake’ was used as a marketing term to attract visitors to the city for summer vacations in the 1880s.