The Library and the Bean

I love Chicago! I've taken my readers there before (click here if you missed it), but our Thanksgiving weekend trip there has inspired me to share more photos of the city. Friday had a spectacularly blue sky, so we wandered around Millennium Park and then took the Art and Culture walking tour offered at the ArchiCenter. The highlight of the trip was the old Chicago Public Library. The building now serves as the Chicago Cultural Center, where almost all events are free and open to everyone. If you're in town this Sunday, stop by for the dance-along Nutcracker Ballet!
This gorgeous dome tops what was the card catalog room in the old library. It could turn anyone into an avid reader (at least into an avid library-goer!).
Here's the tile floor in another room. By the way, you can rent these rooms for events of your own, but I don't know what they charge.
And here's yet more flooring in the ancient River Styx pattern, which unfortunately has Nazi connotations for modern viewers.
I took this closeup of another floor because I love the way it uses squares on point to make a zig zag. I've always used HST's, but this is rather clever, especially if you're making several zig-zag rows across a quilt.

You can see the Bean from the huge windows in the catalog room of the library.
Officially called Cloud Gate, by Anish Kapoor, the Bean is a reflective sculpture that you can view from all sides and can even walk under. I showed several photos of it in my earlier Chicago post, and you can read about it on the Millennium Park website. I just can't get enough of it.
Here's the top of the Bean running into the blue, blue sky.
And here it is again, later that day and from another angle. It's never the same twice.
This is what the fountains at Millennium look like in the winter with no water and no children splashing. The projected faces change frequently, but all are photos of Chicagoans.
I love this view through the winter trees!

We had to cut our trip short by a day because of a snowstorm. I took photos through the car window as we sped by flat Illinois farmlands that were rendered beautiful by the blowing snow. Most of my pictures are blurs, but here's one that actually came out. The whole drive from Chicago looks pretty much like this scene.
And we were greeted by our snowy yard when we arrived safely home. I love the first snow!