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Wrigley Field

With its amazing architecture, sparkling lakefront, amazing parks, fabulous food and friendly locals, Chicago is consistently rated one of the world’s great cities. Here are some great things I was able to see and do on my latest visit. (I am not including the wonderful Obama Presidential Center as I wrote a separate story on it, which you can find here.) SKY HIGH VIEWS It’s always good to get your bearings when you arrive in a city, and one of the great ways to do that in the city that pretty much invented the skyscraper is to take in a Read more

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Chicago is widely known as one of the best food cities in the world. There are 16 restaurants with Michelin stars, including the three-star Smyth. Here are some great places to eat, based on my latest visit in August. THE PUBLICAN The Publican, located in the Fulton Market/West Loop area blew me away with some of the best, and most interesting, food I’ve had anywhere. The ham chop is a double pork chop cooked sous vide with fresh hay and then finished in the oven. The hay gives the meat a slightly grassy taste, and it comes out with the Read more

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Here’s an interesting study that arrives just in time for what is Opening Day for most teams in Major League Baseball. A new study from FlashPicks ranked all 30 MLB ballparks based on the overall number of Instagram hashtags, to determine which stadium is the most picturesque. I do quibble a bit with the methodology, as the teams that attract the most fans, which is are usually the biggest cities, are likely to have the most social media tags. I’m biased as I’ve been a San Francisco Giants fan since I was six, but the Giants’ stadium is hands down Read more

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A lakefront that’s the envy of the world. Amazing architecture. Fabulous food. And Midwestern hospitality. Those are just some of the reasons that readers of Conde Nast Travel have voted Chicago the best big city in the U.S. six years in a row. “That means more than 240,000 readers of Conde Nast voted for us,” Lynn Osmond, President and CEO of Choose Chicago, told me in a recent interview. “No other city has been chosen number one three years in a row, but we’ve done it six times straight.” Osmond said the city’s Midwestern hospitality is another key factor in Read more

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