Optional Walking Tour of Downtown Chicago

Meet in hotel lobby on Friday at 1:45PM for a prompt 2:00PM departure! The group will be bussed to downtown Chicago, where you'll tour Chicago's Loop area led by a professional tour guide.

Cost of the Optional Walking Tour is $20.00 per person and includes bus transportation to downtown.

Millennium Park

Located at the north end of Grant Park, Millennium Park is Chicago's "hottest" new destination. At a final cost of $425 million, it surpasses any other public project of its kind undertaken in Chicago.

Attractions include the Cloudgate sculpture, the Crown Fountain, and the Pritzer Music Pavillion.

Tiffany Glass in the Loop

At the Chicago Cultural Center, visitors will marvel at what is believed to be the largest Tiffany stained glass dome anywhere in the world and the five story high marble, mother of pearl and mosaic glass staircase. The walk will proceed to Marshall Field's Department Store for a close up look at the glistening, iridescent glass dome five stories above shoppers' heads. In the rotunda of the historic Marquette Building, visitors will be able to examine the 360 degree favrile glass frieze that depicts the early settlement of the Chicago area.

Public Art

The walk proves indeed that Chicago is "a museum without walls". Chicago's Loop is a veritable outdoor sculpture and mosaic gallery. There are over 100 internationally acclaimed works in the downtown area alone, including works created by such renown artists as Chagall, Miro, Dubuffet, Calder, Taft and Pablo Picasso. Let your guide lead you through plazas and into the lobbies of grand buildings to view and hear the stories behind Chicago's civic art treasures.

Chicago Architecture

Your guide will tell the story behind the history of each of the downtown's landmark buildings. The walking narrative will continue through the heart of the Loop where you will learn to identify an entire panorama of design styles… Beaux Art, Art Deco, International Style, Post-Modernist and, of course, the signature Chicago Style of architectural design.

You can expect to see masterpieces of brick, steel and glass by the likes of Louis Sullivan, John Root, Frank Lloyd Wright, Helmut Jahn and Mies vander Rohe to name just a few.