Chicago, day 5

The goal of the day is reaching Chicago in the afternoon so to visit it. Iowa is an infinite theory of cornfields and cows fields with the occasional small forest to break the sequence. The bridge over the Mississippi is under revision, thus I have to get round Davenport through a southern junction. As soon as one sets into Illinois, there are lots of road work to slow the pace of the car. Finally I get to Chicago around 5 pm. The lake side drive is a rather impressive way for a first contact. Driving north, the skyscrapers on the left , the beach on the right. It takes a while to find an outrageously expensive park for the car. Then I set off for a walk downtown. It is humid and hot, as it has been in the last two days. After driving two days among caws and corn I arrive in the capital of the Midwest. I follow the advice of a friend: strolling along Michigan and going up to the Signature Room bar at the top of Hancock Tower. I start with the latter. The elevator takes no more than one minute to go up to the 96th floor, then you are there, on top of the world, which is flat around you, both the water and the land till the horizon.
Walking in the city, at street level, I am reminded of what the adjective urban is meant to feel in its most extreme, that is Metropolitan, London, Paris New York. After few months in Los Angeles this is quite shocking. I can say now, I never had this specific feeling. LA stands really apart from the other metropolis. Chicago however has its own specific feeling. Let me put it this way. It is monumental, punctuated by statues, quite overwhelming in the beauty of the skyscrapers. This is somehow the Chicago that in home to Batman, its dark knight. Then there is the magnificent and luxurious city, made of an endless superposition and juxtaposition of palaces and skyscrapers, a city that shows its sheer wealth with unashamed pleasure. It made me think of Venice, the richness of the individual palaces, the many facades that the city presents to the world, the view from the lake, the one from the river, the one from Michigan Avenue. It shares something else with Venice; there is a specific source of wealth that has made these cities rich, in the case of Venice it is the commerce of spices, in that of Chicago, cows, in neither of the two there is an explicit acknowledgement of this basic fact. In simple words, where is the monument to the burger?