GO US:From its architecture and lakeside setting to its shopping, Chicago is second to none, writes Peter Cunningham
DOWN THE FAMOUS shopping mile of Michigan Avenue, Chicago's Fifth Avenue, an anticipation has been gathering these past six months in step with the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, senator for Illinois. If Obama is elected president - and in the bars of this city they'll hear of nothing else - Chicago is going to become a hot destination for a vast coalition of young, change-seeking, post-neocon, ecumenical, liberal and plain fed-up survivors of the Bush years.
With such sober neighbouring states as Indiana, Kansas and Wisconsin, Chicago's exotic sense of excitement has been driven from the start by its pivotal position as a trading centre for agricultural goods and as a key railroad junction. Located at the point where a generous waterway, the Chicago River, flows into a mighty lake, Lake Michigan, Chicago quickly became the vital link between the midwest and the rest. World prices for wheat and corn, soybeans and pork bellies are decided here every day. When it comes to financial clout, New York is the United States' first city, but Chicago is very much its second.
The city's initial appeal to visitors lies in its architecture, including not only its mesmerising collection of beautiful skyscrapers but also the city's relationship with its river and lake and the bounteous parks and open spaces that lie within the downtown area. Chicago evokes Venice, the feeling that comes from a city living on water.
Gliding around a bend of the Chicago River and watching residents boarding their powerboats at private berths beneath condominium buildings, your expectation that a gondola might suddenly appear is far from outrageous.
Being second city is like being little brother: there's a lot of playing catch-up. Accordingly, Chicago's buildings are forever claiming records not just for height or for being handsome but also for uniqueness - "the tallest building in the United States designed by a woman". Until it topped off, last Tuesday, Chicago's Trump International was the only fully operational luxury hotel in the US in which the 65 floors above the hotel were still being constructed.
The great fire of 1871 that consumed most of the city created an urban tabula rasa from which sprang the modern skyscraper and what is known as the Chicago school of architecture. The result, which is the finest collection of urban architecture in the United States, is a wonder to behold, and the best place to behold it from is a seat on one of the architecture tour boats that operate from the pier at the southeast corner of Michigan Avenue Bridge and Wacker Drive. (In the suburbs of the city, particularly in Oak Park, the finest examples of modern suburban architecture can be found in the mould-breaking family homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.) Along the streets off Michigan Avenue, Gothic brownstone town houses with turreted porches and lace- curtained windows stand defiantly apart from their brash and more modern neighbours.
Chicago takes the credit for being the hometown of Al Capone, for being the city where politics and corruption have always been interchangeable terms, the birthplace of the speakeasy, the home of Playboy magazine, the city that once boasted more brothels than bars ("the second city of sin") and about which more than 200 songs have been composed.
It was in Chicago in 1968 that police were instructed by the mayor to shoot dead protesters outside the Democratic National Convention. Forty years on, in the era of Guantánamo Bay, tourists pause outside the Conrad Hilton, where the 1968 delegates stayed, and try to believe that that kind of thing can never happen again.
Grant Park, carved from former swampland between Lake Michigan and the downtown area, is a 130-hectare front yard for the city. One way to see the park - and, again, the skyline - is by Segway, a two-wheeled battery-operated self-balancing scooter: you stand on the platform and steer.
This allows you to visit in a couple of hours what would otherwise take days: Buckingham Fountain; the Art Institute of Chicago, which has a decent collection of impressionist paintings; Museum Campus, at the southern end of the park, which has a planetarium, an aquarium and Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears football team.
The city has a dozen theatres, including Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier; blues clubs; and comedy clubs, such as the famous Second City. Bookings should be made well in advance: more and more Americans are holidaying at home because of the weak dollar and fuel surcharges. Domestic leisure trips are forecast to rise steadily between now and 2012.
Chicago's hotels offer rates a fraction of those in New York. For a different break in a compact, friendly and beautiful lakeside city, where the shopping is all one could wish for and the nightlife second to none, it really is the town, Chicago is.
Go there: Peter Cunningham flew to Chicago as a guest of American Airlines (www.americanairlines.ie) and Chicago Convention Tourism Bureau ( www.choosechicago.com).
Where to go, where to stay and where to eat if you're in Chicago
Where to stay
The Westin Michigan Avenue. 909 North Michigan Avenue, 00-1-312-9437200, www.westin.com. Great location in the middle of the shopping area.
Sheraton Chicago. 302 East North Water Street, 00-1-312-464-1000, www.sheratonchicago.com. Popular for conventions. The fillet mignon in the hotel's Shula's Steak House is to die for. (See Where to eat, below.)
The Drake. 140 East Walton Place, 00-1-312-8782200, www.thedrakehotel.com. Edwardian elegance right on Lake Michigan.
Trump International Hotel. 401 North Wabash Avenue, 00-1-312-5888000, www.trumpchicagohotel.com. See panel below
Where to eat
Shula's Steak House Chicago at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel Towers. 301 East North Water Street, 00-1-312-6700788, www.donshula.com. Designer cuts served in clubhouse-type surroundings.
Vong's Thai Kitchen. 6 West Hubbard Street, 00-1-312- 644-8664, www.vongsthai kitchen.com. Satay combination with chicken, shrimp, beef, and tofu. Tom yom soup. Good lunch stop.
The Gage. 24 South Michigan Avenue, 00-1-312-3724243, www.thegagechicago.com. Irish owned and run restaurant and tavern. The Gage N-17 Fondue is not to be missed, preceded by a glass of Bugey Cerdon rosé.
Where to drink
Jake Melnick's Corner Tap. 41 East Superior Street, 00-1-312-2660400, www.jakemelnicks.com. Charcoal-braised artichoke with mustard and lemon dip and a cooling pint.
Finley Mahony's. 3701 North Broadway, 00-1-773-5490226, www.finleymahonyschicago.com. Irish hospitality on tap.
The Signature Room at the 95th. The John Hancock Center, 875 North Michigan Avenue, 00-1-312-7879596, www.signatureroom.com. Vertiginous views and blues.
Where to go
Chicago Architecture Foundation's Architecture River Cruise brings visitors by boat through the magical river heart of Chicago. Boats leave from the southeast corner of the Michigan Avenue Bridge and Wacker Drive. www.architecture.org.
Spend half an hour browsing in any branch of Walgreens drugstores and grasp the magnitude of what we're paying in Ireland for basic brand-name toiletries and cosmetics. There's one on North Michigan, near the Westin Hotel. www.walgreens.com
The Art Institute of Chicago. 111 South Michigan Avenue, 00-1-312-4433600, www.artic.edu. Cool, classical building on the edge of Grant Park. Good Impressionists.
Take a Segway tour from 400 East Randolph Street (00-1-312-8190186, www.city segwaytours.com) and glide through Chicago for three hours for $70 (about €50).
Walk down North Michigan Avenue (www.themagnificent mile.com) and unleash your credit card at Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Abercrombie Fitch: they're all here.
Have a laugh at the Second City comedy club (00-1-312-337 3992, www.secondcity.com), where many famous comedians got their starts.
Donald Trump's $1,000 dinner
I CAME TO Chicago's Trump International Hotel preparing to be overwhelmed by hype and, to be honest, vulgarity. Donald Trump is synonymous with hyperbole, an eclectic hairstyle and the ruthlessness he shows on the American version of The Apprentice. Reticence is not what the Donald is about.
His recently opened hotel is in the lower part of a 92-storey, €550 million development that soars over the Chicago River where it enters Lake Michigan. The building was still being constructed when I visited: although Trump was operating a fully functioning luxury hotel from the 14th to the 27th storeys, above that, for another 65 floors, was a partly constructed steel skeleton full of ant-like workers.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise, having edged around the scaffolding, to be greeted by doormen in discreet grey livery and to be subsumed into a decor of understated greys and browns. The internal designs are by Ivanka Trump, Mr T's daughter. The emphasis is on cool.
The smallest bedroom covers about 55sq m (600sq ft), the size of a one-bedroom flat. My room had four floor-to-ceiling windows, three metres high and a total of eight metres across, overlooking the river. The view, when one electronically retracted the enormous curtains, was spectacular.
There was a pillow menu - 12 choices - and a water library, which is not a shelf of books about rivers but a tray with four bottles of H20, each costing $25 (€17). "From a mountain range that has been busy capturing rainwater for thousands of years" and so on. Everything, from the crisps to the baseball cap, costs you.
And yet, although continually waiting to be ambushed by bad taste and crassness - to be Trumped - I came out with the inevitable conclusion that Trump Chicago is a class act. The service was impeccable. The man at the head of this enterprise, a step below Trump, is T Colm O'Callaghan, an affable career hotel man who grew up in Killarney, Co Kerry.
Room service's Donald J Trump Dinner is a line-up of Trump's favourite dishes: a salad, a shrimp cocktail, an eight-ounce fillet steak, chocolate cake and a bottle of 1998 Napa Valley wine. Cost per head: $1,000, plus 18 per cent service charge and $4 delivery charge, or $1,184 (€800). I asked if anyone actually ordered this and was told: "Oh, yes, all the time."
Because many visitors come to Chicago for several weeks - for film shoots, for example: Chicago is a popular movie location, and ERis partly shot here - each room has a galley kitchen, plus cutlery, crockery and tableware.
The basic rate fluctuates, but the $495 per room per night Trump Experience promotional rate currently on offer beats high-end New York hotels by a long shot.
Strange business
At €3,666, flying business class with American Airlines to Chicago costs five times more than flying economy. Is it worth it for this seven-hour journey?
American Airlines, the world's biggest, has gone to great trouble to install "fully motorised angled lie-flat seats" in business class. I found them uncomfortable. The seats are too narrow, and although you lie flat you do so at a blood-draining tilt.
Neither was the service what one might reasonably expect to receive in premium seats. In my case the call bell was consistently ignored, even though one could see the call-bell light flashing in the galley, where the crew seemed to spend much of the flight, chatting.
But on the plus side the food was good - the desserts were scrumptious - and the Côtes du Rhône, from Chapoutier, was well chosen.
On behalf of those who actually paid €3,666 for their business-class seat, I was somewhat surprised to be handed a voucher in the airline's business lounge at O'Hare International Airport that said "Good for one complimentary beverage".