Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ireland; Jewish Legacy; and an Ethnic Cemetery tour. These tours,
which generally run about 4 to 6 hours and include lunch, are more
expensive ($50 adults, $45 seniors and children).
On Saturday mornings in the summer, the
Chicago History
Museum
offers 2-hour walking tours of the neighborhoods sur-
rounding the museum: the
Gold Coast, Old Town,
and
Lincoln
Park.
Led by museum docents, they average about four per month
June through August. Day and evening tours are available, and a few
specialty walking tours are usually offered as well. Tours are $10 per
person, and registration is recommended but not required.
Groups can arrange tours of Chicago's
“Black Metropolis,”
the
name given to a South Side area of Bronzeville where African Ameri-
cans created a flourishing business-and-artistic community after
World War II. Contact
Tour Black Chicago
(
&
773/684-9034;
www.tourblackchicago.com) for more information.
10 Staying Active
Perhaps because winters can be brutal, Chicagoans take their sum-
mers seriously. In the warmer months, with the wide blue lake and
the ample green parks, it's easy to think that the city is one big
grown-up playground. Whether you prefer your activity in the water
or on dry ground, you'll probably find it here. For information, con-
tact the city's park district (
&
312/742-PLAY;
www.chicagopark
district.com); for questions about the 29 miles of beaches and parks
along Lake Michigan, call the park district's lakefront region office at
&
312/747-2474.
BEACHES
Public beaches line Lake Michigan all the way up north into the sub-
urbs and Wisconsin, and southeast through Indiana and into Michi-
gan. The best known is
Oak Street Beach.
Its location, at the
northern tip of the Magnificent Mile, creates some interesting sights
as sun worshippers sporting swimsuits and carting coolers make their
way down Michigan Avenue. The most popular is
North Avenue
Beach,
about 6 blocks farther north, which has developed into a vol-
leyball hot spot and recently rebuilt its landmark steamship-shaped
beach house and added a Venice Beach-style outdoor gym; this is
where the Lincoln Park singles come to play, check each other out,
and fly by on bikes and in-line skates. For more seclusion, try
Ohio
Street Beach,
an intimate sliver of sand in tiny Olive Park, just north
of Navy Pier, which, incredibly enough, remains largely ignored
despite its central location.
