Chicago

Patrick Travel

Everyone I’ve ever talked to always has great things to say about Chicago, and after being here a few days I definitely have to agree with them. Sure, it has it’s crime areas but then what big city doesn’t? Chicago is an amazingly walkable city, particularly as a tourist and frankly I can’t say that I’ve felt in danger or anything, even when walking back down town to get home after a night out in the River North Area.

chicago

The city is chock full of amazing architectural wonders, and an amazing number of high-rises. I would even guess that it probably has more floors per capita than any other city in the world. Historically it has the (former) Sears tower once called the tallest building in the world yet there are a huge number of tall buildings considering that I think the population of greater Chicago hovers around something like three million people. It probably makes a whole lot of sense with such bitter winters and blistering winds it apparently gets. I’ve been really fortunate with the weather this week with only one day where it was drizzly and though I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s been hot, we’ve had a few days where the temperature has definitely been a very comfortable one.

bean

I think Chicago is fairly well known for some of its art pieces, including the well known Cloud Gate affectionately known as the “Bean” (the picture above I took from below for something different) located in Millennium Park. It remains a huge draw card and why wouldn’t it with its still highly polished exterior producing a vast array of angles skewing any normal reflection. Just down from there is The Crown Fountain with the images of local Chicagoans smiling and moving around and then every fifteen or so minutes stopping to spout a stream of water from their mouth. I definitely recommend downloading the audio tour from the Millennium Park website as well.

statue

Although I’ve been here for about five days, I can definitely see why Chicago appeals to so many people. There are plenty of art installations around the city (I especially liked this physical manifestation of the American Gothic painting) and the city seems walkable and for those that get tired or just plain lazy, taxis are cheap and public transport is very reasonable.

In Chicago

Patrick Travel, UK Life

Left yesterday(?) morning on a Virgin Atlantic flight to get to Chicago for a friend’s wedding celebration. Lovely all around. Flight wasn’t too packed (got a whole three seat row to myself!) and arrived at a reasonable hour. Can’t wait since I’ve never been here before.

Tube drivers with humour

Patrick Travel, UK Life

On the tube just now… This tube will attempt to stop at all stations. This will be going to … stopping all stations except for Cannon Street (pause) due to a lack of complete interest. How can you not have a laugh at that?

Goodbye Marlow

Patrick Travel, UK Life

It’s been about nine months since I’ve been based out in Marlow in Buckinghamshire. It’s not particularly the easiest of places to get to involving both the tube network, Chiltern railways and a taxi to finish it off but it’s been a great team and some interesting work. I’m leaving the project with mixed feelings, definitely glad I won’t miss the commute though will definitely miss other aspects.

sunrise

Like these views from the hotel that I’d been staying at particularly with the wonderful weather lately. It’s based by a lock, directly opposite a church dotted with headstones nestled amongst well kept jade green grass.

lockview

It certainly makes waking up a much easier task…

The Living End at Koko

Patrick Music, UK Life

Wednesday night saw a huge number of antipodeans (and others) descend upon Koko to watch Aussie rock band, The Living End. Good doesn’t really begin to describe how the night went. It helped that they had some really decent support acts, including Tellison and I think the other people were called To The Bones. Both served to warm up a full house audience on all floors.

thelivingend

We stood fairly close to front of stage, close enough to be pushed around and jump around in some of the audience, but far enough not to be involved in the crazy antics that probably happens at most of The Living End’s gigs. They did an awesome job cycling through plenty of their classic tracks across their five albums, as well as a number from their newest, White Noise which I can highly recommend.

It was definitely a high energy audience, fuelled by an equally high as energy band churning out some amazing tracks. Everyone was friendly, made happy with the great tunes and the only people that ended up dragged out of there were those that were crowd surfing their way to the security at the front of stage. An awesome night that probably left most people pretty sweaty and satisfied.

livingend

(Picture above is linked to the original source and that you can tell that I didn’t take with my camera phone).

Weekend in York

Patrick Travel, UK Life

Last weekend I finally headed up to York to visit a couple of friend Toni and Claire who have been living up there since late last year sometime. I’d promised to visit them sometime this year and finally got a weekend that worked for all of us. It was great seeing both of them and they were fantastic hosts for the weekend.

clairetoni

Getting to York was surprisingly easy. Even though it’s very close to the north most part of England, it only took two hours to get there from Kings Cross station via one of the National Express trains. I booked my tickets in advance but didn’t really get a super cheap fare but at least I managed to reserve my seats which made a huge difference heading up there on a manically busy Friday evening at Kings Cross station. Better yet you get to choose what sort of seat you had, including whether or not you have a table and powerpoint (helpful to plugin in if you need to charge your phone or laptop!)

bettys

Yorkshire is, of course, well known for its tea and there are plenty of places to choose from to sit and have a pot. Fortunately Claire knew the best place to go in York… Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms. It was obviously popular with locals with lots of “ladies lunching”, as well as quite a few groups of tourists. We waited outside in a queue for a table upstairs and it didn’t take too long as they seemed to have enough turn around.

minster

One of the other significant places to visit is the York Minster, apparently the largest gothic cathedral in Europe. Regardless of whether or not their claim is true, it certainly is impressive and the £6 is worth walking around inside. They even have a huge tower that you can climb up for a marginal cost but we decided to skip it with the queue not looking like it was moving and stretching quite some distance inside.

We also visited Harrogate and it took me a while to make the connection with the Harrogate Spa Water that you sometimes see around. The country is absolutely gorgeous with large lush green fields all over the place and very clean tasting waters. It was a great place to take Claire and Toni’s energetic labrador for a walk and a place to socialise with many other dogs. We couldn’t help but stop and laugh (and take a photo) of the following on the way back:

hedge

It was a great weekend to spend in the country and well worth heading up there for a weekend break. It certainly beat the crazy rush to get to airports and then arrive late in some European country. Oh, and it didn’t seem so grim up north.

Eskimo Joe at Koko

Patrick Music, UK Life

Wednesday night saw Australian band, Eskimo Joe take to the stage at Camden’s Koko. I love the venue having been here multiple times but I didn’t even know about the other floors that tower high above. We ended up in the JD lounge on the top most floor where you need to pass through a menacing leather bound door that make it looks like some sort of private members club. On the way back from the toilets, I passed a couple who looked cautious about entering and was about to turn around when I told them that it was fine and open to everyone. Unlike other venues with multiple floors, you still got a great view of all the action down on stage.

koko

I can barely remember the name of the support act. It was a bloke from Leicester who had a decent voice but played some fairly average tunes. He played about five or so songs before handing the stage over to Eskimo Joe who came on at quarter past nine. Having seen them several times back home, what always impressed me about them is that they made some decent effort to connect with the audience and chat such as giving a bit of a brief background to some songs without turning it into some sort of soppy lecture. They always joke between themselves and seem pretty down to earth. As an example, their lead singer, Kavyen apologised to the entire audience when he realised his fly wasn’t done up somewhere through the set. None of this dashing off stage or anything like that.

eskimojoe

Eskimo Joe played a great selection of plenty of songs mainly from their last two albums, and a handful of newer ones that will be coming out for their new album in a couple of months. What struck me about their newer songs is that they sounded very retro, very 80s-like and you can see that they’ve been experimenting with their sounds. Even their third album compared to the previous two was a lot moodier and sombre than the upbeat tunes you’d find on the first two.

It was a nice mid-week break to go and watch some live music. Particularly listening to some live music from a band that I enjoyed listening to when I was back home. It seemed like the very heavily anti-podean crowd enjoyed them just as much.

TheKua.com Rating: 8 out of 10