I had a beautiful spring day in Chicago this week and signed on to the Chicago Architectural Center’s Neighborhood Bus Tour. As weather was good, I seated in the open air top deck. What I enjoyed was a 90-minute narrated excursion through significant historic communities of Chicago. Italian, German, Irish, Chinese, Mexican and many more ethnic areas both past and present. A very interesting introduction with the possible option of returning for a CAC sponsored in-depth walking tour of most neighborhoods. I had the fortune of having Jane Cahill as bus tour guide, delivering a very informative and interesting narration. Thanks to the CAC and Jane for a great Chicago experience!

This is the Chicago Architecture Foundation's pairing with Big Bus to do a tour of five neighborhoods: Greektown, Little Italy, Chinatown, Pilsen (Mexican heritage), and Bronzeville (African American). It's about 90 minutes, depending on traffic. Our docent leading the tour was pretty good. He was reading most of the information off his notes as opposed to other tours where the guide seems to rattle things off by memory, but that's neither here nor there I suppose. There was a good bit of information but I really enjoyed was just the opportunity to see the neighborhoods and get outside of the city. Up until this tour I'd mostly confined myself to the Loop and Magnificent Mile area of the city. A couple of warnings. First, there are low-hanging tree branches to contend with if you are on the upper deck of the bus, which you should be if you want the good views. The guide is pretty good at calling them out and the bus driver took advantage of light Sunday morning traffic to try to dodge them. It's really only a problem if you're completely not paying attention, having to duck a few times isn't a big deal. The second warning is that there's a stretch going back on the highway where you get to moving pretty fast with the wind whipping around. Made me a little nervous being on the top deck of a bus with no seat belts, but that was pretty short, just a few minutes.

Double decker bus tour of historic neighborhoods. Really good docents. Wish we had time for more questions. Well paced trip. Was able to go back into a couple of the places on our own to see it at a slower pace.

This architecture neighborhood tour was the highlight of our trip to Chicago. Our guide was very knowledgeable and provided a lot of history. You see areas that are outside of the downtown Chicago area and sections you do not see on a hop on hop off bus. You cannot get off the bus during the 90 minute tour but it is so interesting you won't even notice. To experience the full feel of Chicago's amazing architecture this tour is recommended.

This tour was with a double decker bus. The docent who led the tour did a good job of relating facts and conjuring images from our imaginations. This is the second tour we've taken through the Architecture Society. They have both been good. My one criticism of this tour was that the microphone system is somewhat inadequate. When we got on a busy street (we were mostly on fairly quiet streets) we could not hear a word the docent said.