Millennium Park

Millennium Park continued...

Jo Hayes is a volunteer at the Lurie Garden.

"I don't think there's anything funnier," she says, "then watching the kids in the [Crown] fountain. They're hilarious.

"If you're having a bad day at the office . . . "

The Crown Fountain, an expression of Spanish artist Jaume Plensa's genius, mixes video (large-screen images of Chicago faces) and water (it spouts from the mouths of those Chicago faces!) to the delight of all who watch it, and play in it.

At the Lurie Garden -- which is stunning -- trails let you walk among the plants and admire their beauty up close, sample their aromas and appreciate their diversity, then stop and relax. Dangle your feet in the pools. Look around you and get a sense of this literal garden in a city -- hortus in urbe -- whose official motto is urbs in horto (City in a Garden).

There's something going on every summer day at the Pritzker -- and it's free -- but no concert for the moment? Look at what Frank Gehry hath wrought. Even in silence, there's music in the shapes that flow in this 140-foot-high pavilion. Go with it. Walk along it. Photograph it, video it, in context with the city that built it. Even in the trellis of pipes over the lawn that supports the speaker system -- functional art -- there is sound when there is no sound at all . . .

Cloud Gate. OK, no one but the artist (Anish Kapoor) and the brochures call it that. Call it The Bean. We do. It's 66 feet wide, 33 feet high, and it would be easy to stand back, fill the frame with a snapshot and figure you've done The Bean.

But it begs you to do more, so you walk around it, move closer, move back, watch how its mirror-finish plays with you and the sky and the architecture that surround it.

Watch how creative individuals and giggling groups maneuver -- even to its underside -- to create the perfectly imperfect portrait. (Is The Bean giggling, too?)

Take a moment and look closer at the city reflected so beautifully in its polished steel. It's there, all that marvelous architecture, inviting visitors to turn around, at least, for an undistorted look: There's the bold Cultural Center (formerly the city's central library, with its Tiffany glass dome), the Carbide and Carbon Building, the gleaming white Aon Building, One Prudential Plaza -- once the city's tallest building, the Smurfit-Stone Building with its diamond top, and so many more.

They're a reminder not only of Chicago's architectural heritage but of the reality that this is a working city, a business city. So while the park has good eats -- the Park Grill and The Cafe are right below Cloud Gate -- other nearby restaurants beckon.

On Michigan Avenue, there's Sweetwater Grille and The Gage, the latter amid a cluster of historic buildings that includes (at 18 S. Michigan Ave.) a Louis Sullivan facade. There are extremes in Chinese restaurants -- the stylish China Grill versus Sixty-Five, basic but a good value. Tavern at the Park, in One Prudential Plaza, offers park views and comfort food at prices that edge toward upscale, and on Wabash Street, Elephant & Castle (a national chain) provides pub grub and Brit ambience.

There are fast-food options as well -- but if the weather is nice, a picnic lunch or supper from Pastoral, a Lake Street cheese & wine shop (there's another in the Lakeview neighborhood), might be just the thing for Millennium Park.

Which -- barely 10 years ago -- was primarily parking lots and railroad tracks. As long ago as 1977, visionaries proposed a variation of what we see today, but the funding and will weren't there.

Led by the current Mayor Daley, that began to change in the late 1990s.

Today, those parking lots and railroad tracks are still there, but on top of them is Millennium Park -- the world's largest "green roof."

And magic? Listen to the children.

For more information about Millennium Park, please contact the Chicago Loop Alliance at 312.782.9160.