In July of 1994, Terry and I attended our second ACB (American Council of the Blind) National Convention in Chicago. After the convention, we took a side trip to Milwaukee to visit our friend Doug Haise.

In the first place, I tried to save us money by booking a flight on a discount airline. Mistake. The flight left from the Tom Bradley International Terminal. No curbside check-in, and horrendous lines at the counter. A madhouse. On top of that, we were held up for at least 20 minutes while the clerks behind the counter tried to contact their supervisor to find out if it was all right if we brought the dog on the plane. Terry was most distressed.

Then, when we got to Chicago, the taxi driver first tried to refuse to take the dog, and then tried to overcharge us. Not an auspicious start to one's vacation experience.

Ah, well. We checked into the hotel, and had a shower and a nap. Terry got her nails done, and I explored the hotel. The Palmer House Hilton (formerly an independent hotel, now part of the Hilton chain) is an elegant old hotel, with a huge two-story, ornately decorated lobby. Today, it has a sort of faded grandeur, but in its day it must have been one of the classiest hotels around.

We then had dinner at the Beef and Brandy, next door to the hotel, and went to bed.

We spent most of this day on a bus tour of Chicago. The tour covered a large part of the city, and gave a good overview. We saw the requisite landmarks like the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, the El tracks, etc., and stopped at a nice Italian restaurant for lunch. We finished in the afternoon with a visit to a tourist attraction describing the Chicago of Al Capone. This was a sort of multimedia exhibit, with pseudo-Audio-Animatronic figures, which told about Capone and his career, and the Chicago of his day.

At the southeast corner of Washington Park, we saw this sculpture:

The frieze (which continues around the back of the sculpture) represents the history of Man, while the shrouded figure of Death:

...contemplatively looks on. The Death figure stands at a point just outside the left border of the first picture. Seen from a normal perspective, Death presents his back to the viewer; however, I had to go around to get a frontal view.

Other sites on the tour included the University of Chicago:

...the Adler Planetarium, which is situated on a spit of land sticking out into Lake Michigan just south of downtown:

...a large neon electric guitar at the "Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's" (more about this later), next door to the Capone exhibit:

...and, of all things, Louis Farrakhan's house. Sorry, no picture.

Here's the Chicago skyline as seen from the Planetarium:

...and the same scene, with some tourists blocking the view:

After we got back to the hotel, we joined Mitch and Cherrie Pomerantz, and several others, for dinner at Berghoff's, a German restaurant near the hotel. Unfortunately, that was the day that the German team won that day's World Cup Soccer game, so the place was extremely noisy. In the next room, they were evidently having a victory party, and singing lustily. I said to Mitch, "If they start singing 'Deutschland Über Alles,' we're outta here!"