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Chicago

  • Writer: Isabelle Lemoine
    Isabelle Lemoine
  • Sep 21, 2022
  • 2 min read



Florida is beautiful but... what if we went to Chicago for a few days? We've always wanted to go there.

It may seem strange to leave Florida and go to Chicago for just a few days, but traveling in the United States is much cheaper than in Canada. The prices of domestic flights are not comparable to those we know at home.

So here we are, off for 4 nights in Chicago!

Given the occupancy rate and the prices of hotels in the city center, we booked a room in the northern suburbs of the city. We were in the Loyola University neighborhood a few train stations from downtown and a block from Lake Michigan.


This lake is one of the five great lakes of North America. It is the second largest of the great lakes in volume and the third largest in surface area (57,750 km2). From the shore, you really feel like you are at the seaside, with less of the sea smell.



Chicago is the third largest city in the United States with 2,746,388 inhabitants in 2020.

The Chicago metropolitan area (commonly called "Chicagoland") has approximately 10 million inhabitants.

The name of the city comes from the Native American word "sikaakwa" which means "stinky onion".

A trading post founded in the late 18th century, Chicago is a "mushroom city" that grew thanks to the influx of immigrants from Europe. In October 1871, a large part of the city was destroyed by a fire that lasted 3 days. 300 people lost their lives in the tragedy, 17,500 buildings were destroyed and approximately 100,000 people were left homeless. In 1871, Chicago had 324,000 inhabitants, about 1/3 of whom lost everything in the fire.

The city was rebuilt very quickly after the fire and attracted many renowned architects. 14 years after the disaster, the first skyscraper in history, the Home Insurance Building, was built. Today's city is a gentle mix of skyscrapers, red stone buildings, neoclassical buildings and bourgeois houses.



Chicago is also known for being the city of organized crime. So much so that bus tours allow you to go to the places of the "exploits" of these good guys.

Obviously everyone thinks of Al Capone, who certainly raged for a time in the city, but he was a New Yorker for the time being.

One of the most famous is John Herbert Dillinger whose film Public Enemies with Johnny Depp retraces his epic. Several scenes were filmed on the places where the events really happened.



We also went to other legendary places in the city such as the Billy Goat Tavern restaurant or the first Playboy “castle”.



Chicago is one of ten American cities to have teams of the five major American professional team sports: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer.

During our stay, we obviously went to a baseball game and we encouraged the Cubs!



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