Introduction
'Chicago, Chicago': a pumping, showstopping extravaganza of a city. Chicago has the lot: itinerant artists babbling Beat, Polish aunties stuffing sausage, African-American mothers organising the block, blue-collar guys bad-mouthing the Bears, a crooner singing the blues on the South Side. It's a city that wears its American heart proudly on its sleeve.
Chicago's diverse population has built a city with an unrivalled tradition of jazz and blues, an astonishing architecture, an appetite for hearty food, award-winning newspapers, universities full of Nobel laureates and some of the most die-hard sports fans you'll ever meet. 'I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.' - Henry Louis Mencken
The city of Chicago, in northeastern Illinois, stretches for 40km (25mi) along the southern tip of Lake Michigan's shore. Illinois is located in the northern central part of the United States, bordered by Wisconsin and Lake Michigan to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the west, Indiana to the east and Kentucky to the south. The Loop is the historic centre of the city, drawing its name from the elevated train tracks that circle it. Its buildings constitute a virtual textbook of American architecture. The intersection of Madison and State Streets is the hub of a numbering system that lets you navigate without knowing any street names. From this point, all street numbers are predicated on north, south, east or west, depending on which way they radiate. Many of Chicago's neighbourhoods are named for their location in relation to the Loop (South Loop, Near North, West Side, etc).
Destination Facts
Time zone: GMT -6
Area: 588
Coordinates: 41.8265457153 latitude and -87.6413040161 longitude
Population: 2850000
Daylight Saving: From second Sunday in March to first Sunday in November
Area codes: 312 inside the Loop; 773 outside
Getting There
The hot Chicago summer is the peak of the festival season, with major events taking place in the parks and neighbourhoods every weekend. September is blessed with reliably warm days and is probably the most pleasant month of the year, weather wise, but there's less going on during this period. January to March is when Chicago is least busy and hotels and airfares are usually at their cheapest; however, temperatures and brisk winds will guarantee that you'll spend most of the time indoors.
Weather
They don't call it the 'Windy City' for nothin'. There's everything from cool, God-sent lake breezes at the height of summer to skirt-raising gusts in the spring to spine-chilling, nose-chiselling blasts of icy air in the winter. Late spring and early autumn are pleasant, being generally warm, clear and dry. July and August can get really hot, with temperatures from 27-32 ° C (80-90 ° F) and high humidity. Winters can be damp and cold - between -11 ° C and -2 ° C (12 ° F and 29 ° F) if you're lucky - and snowy for days on end.
Places of Interest
The lake is an ocean, the buildings scrape the sky.
Loaf your way around the Loop, Chicago's 'inner circle', and imbibe its busy daytime hum and after-hours hipness. Put your head in the clouds at Sears Tower or treasure the impressionist collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the world's premier museums.
Chicago has the lot: itinerant artists babbling Beat, Polish aunties stuffing sausage, African-American mothers organising the block, blue-collar guys bad-mouthing the Bears, a crooner singing the blues on the South Side. It's a city that wears its American heart proudly on its sleeve.
Chicago's diverse population has built a city with an unrivalled tradition of jazz and blues, an astonishing architecture, an appetite for hearty food, award-winning newspapers, universities full of Nobel laureates and some of the most die-hard sports fans you'll ever meet.
Related Cities: Alaska, Boston, Aspen, Atlanta
'Chicago, Chicago': a pumping, showstopping extravaganza of a city. Chicago has the lot: itinerant artists babbling Beat, Polish aunties stuffing sausage, African-American mothers organising the block, blue-collar guys bad-mouthing the Bears, a crooner singing the blues on the South Side. It's a city that wears its American heart proudly on its sleeve.
Time zone: GMT -6
Area: 588
Coordinates: 41.8265457153 latitude and -87.6413040161 longitude
Population: 2850000
Daylight Saving: From second Sunday in March to first Sunday in November
Area codes: 312 inside the Loop; 773 outside
The hot Chicago summer is the peak of the festival season, with major events taking place in the parks and neighbourhoods every weekend. September is blessed with reliably warm days and is probably the most pleasant month of the year, weather wise, but there's less going on during this period. January to March is when Chicago is least busy and hotels and airfares are usually at their cheapest; however, temperatures and brisk winds will guarantee that you'll spend most of the time indoors.
They don't call it the 'Windy City' for nothin'. There's everything from cool, God-sent lake breezes at the height of summer to skirt-raising gusts in the spring to spine-chilling, nose-chiselling blasts of icy air in the winter. Late spring and early autumn are pleasant, being generally warm, clear and dry. July and August can get really hot, with temperatures from 27-32 ° C (80-90 ° F) and high humidity. Winters can be damp and cold - between -11 ° C and -2 ° C (12 ° F and 29 ° F) if you're lucky - and snowy for days on end.
The lake is an ocean, the buildings scrape the sky.
Loaf your way around the Loop, Chicago's 'inner circle', and imbibe its busy daytime hum and after-hours hipness. Put your head in the clouds at Sears Tower or treasure the impressionist collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the world's premier museums.
Good stuff!
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