Our visit to Chicago is our last city on this USA trip and we can only agree with Frank Sinatra - 'My kind of town, Chicago is!'

We knew very little about this city before this visit. We knew the baseball teams were the Cubs and the White Sox. Of course we had heard of the Chicago Bulls and the great Michael Jordan and Aussie Luc Longley. We also knew about a sculpture in the city called Cloud Gate or more fondly known as 'the Bean'.

Now it was time to explore this city.

Chicago lies beside Lake Michigan just like Milwaukee, but is much larger - the fifth largest population in North America, thanks Wikipedia.

We drove into town early with the plan to see what we wanted to see before noon, the reason why will become more obvious as you read on.

Kerrie snapped photos as we approached the city and we soon found ourselves parked beside Millennium Park, right in the city beside Lake Michigan.

Our first visit was to Cloud Gate or the Bean as it is better known. We sometimes comment that cities have wasted their money on some of the sculptures that are on display - have no meaning and not even attractive. Cloud Gate is definitely the exception to this observation. This modern chrome sculpture is not only attractive but a huge drawcard in the city. People milled about the Bean looking for the perfect reflection photo. The city skyline can also be seen reflected in the Bean.

We walked through Grant Park and found the splendid Buckingham Fountain which is one of the largest fountains we have seen in any city. We later found out that it actually is one of the largest fountains in the world. The centre water jet streams 150 feet into the air every hour on the hour - more impressive than a clock's chime.

After walking for an hour we returned to the car to continue exploring the city by vehicle. We drove up and down the streets marvelling at the beautiful and varied architecture of the buildings. One of the biggest and most impressive modern structures is the Trump building - why are we not surprised?

Large cities we have discovered, are best visited on a Sunday as there is less traffic. The exception to that theory is if there is an event on. Today was one of those Event Days. We had discovered that today was the LBGTQ Pride Parade.

We headed out of town at 11:30am just as some of the streets were starting to be blocked off. As the parade would last for several hours and bring most of the city to a standstill we headed north to check out Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, so did many other drivers. We spent about an hour in heavy traffic before giving up and heading back to our hotel for a quiet afternoon.

Just as we arrived we were hit by a large thunderstorm with swirling, rushing wind and heavy rain, so we were glad to be tucked up in our hotel room.

We fly back to London tomorrow afternoon for two days before flying home on Wednesday.