Neighborhoods: Grant Park

The weather here has been absolutely fabulous lately, so last week I took time after work to just wander. I figured that it'd be a nice time of year to wander around Grant Park. Grant Park is cozied up right next to Millennium Park, to the point where I have problems figuring out where one ends and the other begins. To get to Grant Park, you just keep walking past Millennium Park and stop before you hit the lake.

Grant Park hosts plenty of concerts, as well as plenty of people walking dogs and kids playing tag. It's probably the most famous for hosting Obama's acceptance speech on Election Night, 2008. I was studying abroad in London at the time (yes, clearly the silliest time to leave Chicago), but friends from college biked down to Grant Park to celebrate. They described thousands of people crowded into an area with huge screens and a stage. I know all this happened, but have problems figuring out just where in Grant Park the speech occurred. There are a lot of little clearings around here, but nothing that looks as if it could contain all the masses of people that were present.

Grant Park is a slightly hilarious area to me. It's a

green space surrounded by busy streets and skyscrapers. I walked through a little grove of trees, which felt absolutely surreal until I realized that the trees had been planted in a perfect grid. Somehow that made me feel better -- even though this park is full of nature, it is precisely ordered. It's still very much a part of Chicago's downtown area.

I walked over to the Petrillo Band Shell, which hosts concerts during the summer. Right now the shell looks desolate, nothing but an expanse of dead flowerbeds and concrete. You're all going to have to take my word that during the summer this place is packed, lively, and generally much more interesting. In the fall, the shell is just part of the grey of downtown Chicago, with only a fringe of trees to break up the monotony.

Things get a lot more beautiful right near the shell, where there's a rose garden complete with sculpted shrubberies and trellis arches. I probably went there on one of the last days to see the roses before things get pruned down for winter, and I'm very glad I did so; it was absolutely beautiful. I grew up near a huge park in Lincoln with a rose garden, so walking among the roses here in Chicago felt a bit like home. It's also pretty fantastic to see all the different colors of roses near the grey of buildings.