After a week’s worth of work, the weekend was a very welcome break which had to be put to good use which it was. Living in the suburbs has its own charm with not much of a traffic to worry about and a lot of greenery all around, the glimpse of which I had shared in my previous post In an around Chicago but there’s nothing much to ‘do’ in the suburbs apart from lazing around and so, for the weekend, I decided to visit downtown Chicago.

Now, there’s so much to see in the downtown area and its impossible to do it all in a day or two. So after checking the options that I had for the weekend, I decided to experience the famous Chicago architecture Boat Tour at Navy Pier.

Now I have been to enough piers before but this place looked nothing like one. It seemed to be more of a mela (a fair) than a pier where people would come to board or get off boats to or from other places.

Before I came here, I was all excited about the boat tour and about seeing the high-rises of Chicago from a different angle, from the water, but I had not at all expected the party-like environment here and was pleasantly surprised to see that.

People were taking rides on the big sky-wheel which is there, getting off and on boats taking them for the architectural tour or, just roaming around doing nothing.

Navy Pier is definitely was a full day’s as visit opposed to what I have expected it to be.

Chicago Architecture Boat Tour

For the architectural boat tour, you can either take a speed-boat or the normal one. The speed-boat sounded exciting to me and I was not at all disappointed by my choice. The first part of the ride turned out to be a great fun with loud music, a speeding speed-boat and to top it all, a dancing guide 😉 .

‘Floating’ through the high-rises of Chicago, seeing the city from a different perspective as our guide explained every detail about the building that approached was a very enriching experience that cannot be put to words honestly enough. I believe, you will only get to feel it when you listen to the facts while seeing the engineering marvels right in front of you as you pass, them one by one.

The Chicago architecture river cruise also showed how well the city makes use of its waterways. Be it ferrying people from one part of the city on water-taxis to another, be it the emergency services who use the waterways to reach their destination when needed much quickly or be it for the joy-rides all across the city, Chicago’s waterways are its life-line if nothing more.

Let me close by saying this, “while there are many tours in Chicago and you can pick any of them, the Chicago river boat tour, aka, the Chicago Architecture boat tour should undoubtedly be towards the top of the list”.

So, have you taken the boat – tour or may be visited some other place in and around Chicago which you really liked? Why not tell me about that?