Chicago Gallery

After some 30 hours of continuous travel, Saul and I arrived in a hot and sticky Chicago. Jet lag and Durban-style weather notwithstanding, we immediately started gorging ourselves on the urban delights on offer in the USA’s third-largest city. In 3 days, we managed to see 3 shows (blues, improv comedy and ballet), sampled art and architecture, did the requisite shopping (sexy underwear from Victoria’s Secret and sexier camera lenses from an Amazon locker tucked into the back of a 7-11) and ate Chicago-style deep-dish pizza at two of the famous deep-dish places. We took a few Uber and subway rides, but mostly we walked and walked under the blue skies and gleaming skyscrapers. And, of course, in the gritty alleys behind the polished facade.

Chicago’s elevated train lends a pleasing grittiness to the polished city centre. Saul’s HDR photography adds a slightly surreal edge.

Buckingham Memorial Fountain features 133 water jets and keeps tourists entertained by going into its “major display” for 20 minutes every hour

Saul photographing a spiral staircase tucked away in an out-of-the-way corner of the Art Institute

The artwork “America Windows” by Marc Chagall was featured in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. The Ferris Bueller connection does not explain what E.T. is doing hidden in the corner of one the stained glass panels.

Saul liked this meticulously detailed 1930s painting with its jack-in-the-box depiction of Mussolini

Alexandre Hogue’s “Erosion No. 2. Mother Earth Laid Bare” comments on the 1930s Dust Bowl ecological disaster on America’s Great Plains

We were lucky enough to catch the open-air finale of the 5-day Chicago Dancing Festival. The guy in the air is Romeo.

More from the Chicago Dancing Festival

Night-time view of Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. Don’t miss this fountain if you’re ever in Chicago in the summer. It’s a rather entertaining public artwork and a must-do if you have small, over-heated kids with you.

With Chicago’s blues pedigree, at least one late-night blues show was a non-negotiable, jetlag or not

In addition to making first-rate music, the musicians were clearly enjoying themselves

The Chicago Theatre, now a live theatre venue, was originally a movie house for silent films

A late afternoon runner passes under a bridge on the Chicago Riverwalk

A car waiting behind the Chicago Theatre looks like what Al might have used if he were still around

The neo-Gothic Tribune Tower was erected in 1925 as the headquarters of the Chicago Tribune newspaper

Not as colourful as the famous front entrance

View from the pier at North Avenue Beach, one of Chicago’s urban lakeshore beaches

San-Marié on the pier at North Avenue beach