Thanks to a confluence of imaginative architects (and the unexpected redecorating opportunities left by the devastating 1871 Great Chicago Fire) the Windy City has a jaw-dropping collection of spectacular buildings.

A number of innovations were hallmarks of the “Chicago School“ of architectural style: steel-frame construction, refined exterior embellishment, sheets of plate glass and some of the first modern skyscrapers.

One of my favorites in the city is the 1929 Carbide & Carbon Building on Michigan Avenue. It is a soaring Art Deco marvel and I never tire of walking around it to see what new flourishes pop up that I hadn’t noticed on previous visits.

You can stay there if you’d like — it now houses the Hard Rock Hotel Chicago.

I don’t have any formal training in architecture; I just love cool buildings, but I don’t always understand or appreciate what I’m looking at.

Rather than wander around with a construction engineering history book under your arm, I recommend guided tours with the nonprofit Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF).

My teen daughter and I took their lively docent-led architecture tour on the Chicago River (there’s not a bad seat in the house - I mean, on the boat) so if you only have time for one, that’s the tour I’d recommend.

The CAF’s main office is just across from the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue, a few blocks down from that great Carbon & Carbide building.

I was amazed at the giant whiteboard absolutely stuffed with upcoming guided tours and programs of every description.

The gift shop is a most dangerous collection of interesting doo-dads related to the city and her lovely buildings. I barely made it out alive! :)

Although I can always use another commuter coffee mug, and it’s to support a good cause, right?

The CAF “ArchiCenter” is open 361 days a year; call them at (312) 922 - 3432 extension 240.

If you’re taking the Chicago-area subway (Chicago Transit Authority) get off at these nearby stations:

• Adams/Wabash station for the Brown, Green, Orange, and Purple lines
  
• Jackson/State Station for the Red Line
  
• Jackson/Dearborn Station for the Blue Line

Related posts:

• Lou Malnati’s: going local for Chicago-style deep dish pizza
• The unknown city of Chicago

I wanted to make this PT’s Jan Morris week, not that it necessarily coincides with anything particular about her, like her birthday. The past couple weeks have zipped by without my noticing, so I’ll just celebrate Jan Morris when and how I can.

I’ve been slowly reading through her book A Writer’s World: Travels 1950-2000 since I left for Rome last month and am daily heartened and amazed at the quality and quantity of work and thought this writer has put in over the last 50-some years.

Reading Jan Morris is like being on an eclectic, elegant holiday where the food is fantastic, light, flavorful, spicy, sweet, sometimes decadent, served in small portions, and the taste is always akin to a minor religious experience.

As described, A Writer’s World starts out in the 1950s, when Jan was James and in one of the first major published essays was on Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary and a frozen beard. Morris’s sex change in the 1970s plays a very tiny role in this book, the operation being written about cautiously as part of an essay on Casablanca.

It’s fascinating to read the evolution of the author. In the earlier essays, Morris’s language is always effusive and enthusiastic. “Only the city of (La Paz / Rome / Cairo / etc.) could put together such (pizzazz / modernity / effervessence / etc.” occurs constantly, and I think every single essay about Africa includes the word “fizz.” Morris was always a great writer, but matures through the 70s and 80s, writing lengthy essays on Manhatten and South African apartheid that are intelligent, prescient, and strongly supported as well as strongly opinioned.

Morris’s writing has been described as idiosyncratic, but I think it’s more than that. Somehow she invariably puts her finger on the truth of a place, what makes the heart of it, the soul. What makes places tick and move and live. Even Colin Thubron, my favorite travel writer, doesn’t usually venture the bald commentaries Morris makes. Morris isn’t afraid to say what she thinks, what she sees, and particularly what she thinks about what she sees. This combined with the talents of a great travel writer is a rare thing.

Hey, everyone. Sorry about not posting this weekend but I got so caught up in a new project that everything else sort of slipped my mind.

What’s the project, you ask?

Well, it combines my love of travel and writing and focuses on an important issue in today’s world.

Of course, you’ve probably already figured it out from this post’s heading. But just in case you haven’t, I’ll be writing about green travel for the b5Media network.

The blog is called Traveling the Green Way and will be looking at all things relating to traveling green.

Sure hope you stop by and have a look.

And for any of you who write about travel, I’ll be hosting a Green Travel Carnival every other week.

So think green with your travel posts and join the first Green Travel Carnival that will be held on the 11th of June.

Here’s how you can Join the Green Travel Carnival.

See you there…