Destination Unlocked

Welcome to Destination Unlocked with me, Daniel Edward.

Destination Unlocked is the chatty travel podcast where a local expert helps

you unlock their corner of the world.

Today we’re unlocking Chicago, a city I’ve somehow never visited, but absolutely

plan to after this conversation.

My guest is Hillary Marzec, founder of Inside Chicago Walking Tours, and she’s

packed this episode with genuinely useful tips from the best Chicago neighborhoods

to what to eat and what not to put on a hotdog to why Chicago’s architecture is

some of the most important in the world.

If you are planning a Chicago trip, or flirting with the idea, stay with us.

So Hillary, where are you unlocking for us today?

Hello Daniel.

I am unlocking beautiful Chicago on a sunny, crisp, autumn day.

Beautiful.

And thank you for using the English term, autumn.

A Fall morning in North America is just gorgeous.

It’s an amazing time of year to be there.

Yes, definitely it is.

And I think that Chicago gets a bad rap for its weather, so I’m

here to represent for the autumn and even the cooler seasons.

I think we will come on to weather.

Actually, I think a conversation about Chicago without talking about

the weather is like talking about London without talking about the rain.

But before, before we do touch on the weather , if somebody has never

been to Chicago before, let’s just round up the top things that they

simply must have on an itinerary and then we’ll dive in from there.

First of all, dress for the weather, obviously.

We always say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only badly dressed people.

Given that, I would say in terms of things to do and things to see in Chicago, uh,

number one, absolutely the architecture that’s hands down, something that you

have to see, however it is that you see it, whether it is doing a river

architecture tour or a walking tour that features interiors like my business does.

Just getting out and actually enjoying and learning to appreciate the

place that Chicago has in, not only American, but really international

modern architectural history.

That’s your number one thing.

Do the architecture.

I would also say appreciate Chicago for its food.

Believe it or not, we’re not just pizza and hot dogs and Italian beef,

though those are all very good.

We have about 200 neighborhoods and just like so many big American

cities, we are a city of immigrant communities and immigrant histories,

and so our cuisine reflects that.

So I would say eat your way through Chicago’s neighborhoods.

We have an area at Downtown where Buckingham Fountain is, by Millennium

Park, by Maggie Daly Park, there’s this big chunk of green space.

We’ve had some part of the city, since our earliest days designated

to be publicly accessible Parkland.

I definitely think of the waterfront, the beaches onto the

lake, which you don’t even realize is a lake, it’s so ginormous.

I hadn’t thought about the green spaces.

And it’s just gotten bigger and bigger.

We call it Chicago’s front yard: it’s Grant Park.

And then just west of that going along Michigan Avenue, we have also little

special gardens, including the Spirit of Music Garden where we have free

outdoor dance festivals in the summer.

We call this little string of gardens the Emerald Necklace that

Michigan Avenue wears along the lake.

So yeah, we are a very green city.

That is so poetic.

I love that.

The Emerald necklace, oh!

Maybe that was Emerald City.

You know, there actually is a, a connection there.

Did you know that?

I did not, go on, what’s the connection?

The Emerald City actually in the Wizard of Oz, L Frank Baum actually

wrote The Wizard of Oz in Chicago.

And don’t quote me on this, but I am being recorded, so

maybe you can quote me on this.

You will be quoted!

where the main campus of the World’s Fair was these gorgeous Neoclassical Beaux-Arts

style buildings that were meant to be temporary, it was kind of like a glorified

carnival, and no one had ever seen anything like that in the United States.

Certainly hadn’t seen it electrified at night.

It must have been absolutely magical.

And so, it’s kind of commonly said that Walt Disney then grew up with stories

from his Dad about this magical place, and then he comes up with Disneyland

and the castle and the magical city.

You know, whether it is the, the Magical Kingdom or the Emerald

City, they both kind of have their heart in Chicago, believe it or not.

Wow.

I always imagined that he would’ve been sitting in Kansas thinking,

oh, how do I get outta here?

He wrote it in the Emerald City.

The thing with Chicago is it, it gets many nicknames… Windy City being one of the

more famous ones, which obviously touches on some of your delightful weather.

Um, but also America’s Best Big City.

Apparently it’s official.

It’s been voted America’s Best Big City, for nine years running, which is amazing.

Yes, that’s absolutely true.

I mean, people internationally might have incorrectly assumed

New York, but no, America’s Best Big City is Chicago.

Why do you think that is?

Well, I would say working in tourism I do meet a lot of

international guests and I can’t tell you how often I hear the exact

same kind of sequence of thinking and events and planning that people make.

They say, when you visit the United States, first place

you have to visit is New York.

And then because you wanna see something on the West Coast,

you might jump over to LA or San Francisco or maybe even Las Vegas.

And then maybe because you have a layover in Chicago, you’ll do a day in Chicago.

And every single person, I’m not saying this because I work in

the tourism industry, I’m saying this because this is the actual

feedback I’ve had over 20 years.

People say, we really wish we would’ve started in Chicago because

you’re just not expecting it.

You don’t know that it’s such a beautiful city.

You don’t know that there’s so much to do, so I think that, um, in a way,

Chicago is sort of a best kept secret, especially among international tourists,

but even among American tourists.

If you were to plan out a three day visit, you said there

are hundreds of neighborhoods.

Where do you base yourself?

I think base yourself Downtown because you are

centrally located, it’s walkable.

The whole city is relatively walkable, but obviously when you’re Downtown

where all the L Lines come together and converge; that’s where most of

the museums are, that is where we have so many of our free events, you know,

throughout the summer for example, or even in around Christmas time.

That’s where we have the Christkindlmarket, that’s where we

have the official city Christmas tree.

You’re in the center of everything and you have the easiest access to

L lines and buses so that you can go explore other neighborhoods.

L lines.

How easy is it to use?

I think they’re very easy to use.

Picture, you know Chicago right up against Lake Michigan.

Lake Michigan is in the east, Chicago’s to the west of it.

You basically have this nugget of a Downtown and all these different L

lines kinda spider out through the city.

And so the farther out you get, the more spread apart these L lines get.

And so if you get out into the farther neighborhoods, it’s difficult to transfer

from one line to another without coming in, transferring near the nugget of

Downtown and then going back out.

Or you just take bus lines to get from one to another.

A tourist’s come in for three days or so, should they get

a, pass card that just sort of covers them or you pay as you go?

I think getting some kind of pass . Get a day pass, I wanna say for a whole

day on the CTA, uh, it’s like five bucks.

That’s amazing.

My gosh.

In winter you could just ride it for the warmth.

And some people do.

I’ve considered it myself.

And in terms of museums, you are spoiled in, Chicago.

I don’t think people realize how much there is there.

The art museum is the one that immediately comes to my mind.

What would come for you?

I would say that probably my two favorite museums are the Art Institute.

Absolutely.

But also the Chicago History Museum.

You know, things like the Shedd Aquarium, the other planetarium,

the Field Museum of Natural History, those are all wonderful museums.

And I tell people, if you have more than a few days in Chicago,

absolutely go and explore those.

You know, if you really like fish, absolutely go ahead.

But I also feel like you can get an aquarium and a planetarium anywhere in

the world, whereas you can’t get this specific art that you’re gonna find

in the Art Institute anywhere else.

You can’t get a museum specifically about Chicago history anywhere else.

So I recommend those two more than anything.

I think you’re so right.

And I have had heated discussions about aquariums with people before

because, it sounds so dismissive , but it sort of is also true.

I mean, we, we are on this earth for a a finite amount of time, and how

you spend your time shows what you value, and I’m telling you, if you love fish,

then explore the aquariums of the world.

No one is judging.

And if you were to pick one or, or two main neighborhoods outside of Downtown

that are well worth hopping on the L and, and exploring for half a day or something,

where would you say to head out to?

It’s a good question.

The two that pop to mind.

’cause there’s, there’s, there’s something in every neighborhood.

I would say Wicker Park, uh, Wicker Park, Bucktown, are two neighborhoods,

we kind of lump them together and say Bucktown Wicker Park.

And I would say that that’s a fun neighborhood and an accessible

neighborhood to get to, several stops off of downtown, taking the blue line out.

You have this wonderful combination of historic architecture from the

great beer barons of the 19th century, building their mansions out there to

very hip, even hipster, places like cafes and restaurants, and it’s a,

it’s a very interesting mix of people.

Wicker Park is probably the most kind of visitor friendly,

while not being Downtown.

But then if you wanna just see kind of how Chicagoans live, then getting

to a maybe lesser known, but still accessible and still pretty neighborhood.

Uh, there’s a neighborhood called Andersonville that’s

historically a very Swedish area.

That’s kind of how Chicago neighborhoods are, is like who settled it when,

that’s kind what we know it as.

And so there’s a big old water tower on one of the buildings there that has a

huge Swedish flag on it, for example.

So Andersonville is like a lot of Chicago neighborhoods where it has

kind of a commercial drag that has a bunch of restaurants and shops.

And then just off of that, you have all kinds of representative

residential architecture: brownstones, graystones, bungalows.

So I think Andersonville is kind of an accessible neighborhood to do a

little bit of like shopping and people watching, but also get out into the

neighborhoods and just kinda see what Chicagoans are like and see how they live.

Really see how the locals live life.

’cause that’s how you experience what real life is like.

Otherwise you just see the billboard.

Yeah.

Or you just see the gangster movies and you figure that we all have,

you know, how many times have I encountered French people who say,

“ah, Chicago, Al Capone, bang, bang”.

I’m like, uh, it’s a little more, a little more than that.

I’ve gotta ask you, given that we’re sort of veering to the Italian side

of Chicago, about pizzas… deep dish.

What would you like to know?

Well, really, I’d like to know why?

I don’t dunno if that offends people.

How really, I think is the main question.

How did this happen to a pizza?

You talk about it, like we desecrated it, we made it better.

Okay.

You know, here’s the thing, and, and I, I will stick

to this till the day I die.

I think that food is like any kind of art, it’s very subjective

and everybody has things they like and things they don’t like.

And so when people, you know, get up on Facebook saying like, you are not

a real Chicagoan if you like deep dish pizza, it’s like, come on now.

You know, like, that’s ridiculous to say.

Something like that.

Everybody’s got stuff they like, they got stuff they don’t like.

So the way that Chicago Deep Dish came to be.

Is that, uh, pizza back around the mid 20th century, like World War II era

pizza wasn’t really a thing for us.

And apparently, when GIs were over in Europe, particularly in

Italy, they experienced pizza.

They experienced a thin crust, you know, Neapolitan, essentially style

pizza that wasn’t meant to be a meal.

It was kind of like a snack food.

And so, it got brought back here and served in bars and taverns after the

war, a lot of guys started opening up corner taverns in their neighborhoods.

And the idea was you wanna serve something to go with your beer after

a long day of work, but you don’t wanna destroy your appetite because

then your wife’s gonna be mad, right?

And so we did start selling thin crust, cut into squares, and that’s

a Chicago thing, thin crust, not cut into triangles, but cut the little

squares, so that you could have just a little bit of a snack with your beer.

Richard Novarty, he was called Rick Ricardo, together with

a guy from Texas, Ike Sewell.

They opened up a pizzeria in River North in Chicago.

And everybody says, Ike Sewell, being from Texas, everything’s bigger in Texas,

wanted to make pizza into kind of like a stick to your bones meal kind of food.

And so they made deep dish pizza.

Who actually came up with a recipe as a hotly debated thing.

And with the success of that pizzeria, 12 years later, they opened up a

second pizzeria down the block.

And so now that they had two within a block of each other, they gave them

numbers, Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due.

And so Pizzeria Uno is now this huge chain throughout the United States,

but Deep Dish Pizza was really born in Chicago at the original Pizzeria Uno.

Wow.

And is it popular or is it, is it a tourist thing now?

You know, I think Chicagoans, they feel like, they feel like

it gives them cred somehow to say like, I don’t like deep dish.

That’s only for tourists.

That’s not true at all.

Tourists are going out to these neighborhoods, these far flung

neighborhoods having deep dish pizza.

No, some of us like it, some of us don’t.

You know, it’s really a personal thing.

I will say this.

A poorly made deep dish, Chicago style pizza has a lot of bread at the bottom.

Because that’s the cheap ingredient, right?

Because a well-made Chicago style pizza and what is really kind of like

the essence of it, is that it has a very thin, crispy crust at the bottom

that stretched up a two inch side pan.

And then they put the cheese on top of the crust, which basically

protects it from the wetness of any ingredients that go on top.

It’s almost like a filled casserole.

And so if you have a well-made Chicago style pizza, it has a nice, thin,

crispy layer of dough at the bottom.

If you have a poorly made one, it’s gonna have a big fat layer of cakey dough.

And that just means that they were trying to be cheap when they’re making it.

Mm. So they should show an x-ray of their pizzas

I do all the time.

to prove themselves.

Yeah.

I’ve got another food thing to ask you , and then we’re gonna

get into architecture, ’cause I know that’s your bread and butter

whilst we’re talking of food.

Why can’t you have ketchup on a hot dog?

I think they called them Depression Sandwiches.

The idea being that if you have to make a meal go far and you have a sandwich

with your meat and your bread, ’cause that’s really what a hot dog is, right?

You’ve got your meat and your bread.

To make it stretch farther and fill your belly more, put everything on it from

the stalls around you at the market.

We say, “run it through the garden”.

And so you have this kind of filling, dare I say, healthy toppings

like tomatoes and onions and a dill pickle and things like that.

Ketchup would be too sweet and overpowering.

It would interrupt, it would disrupt what is really kind of a

delicate balance of flavors and textures and even temperatures.

I’ve never heard a, a hot dog be described as delicate before.

I’ve been eating the wrong hot dogs.

I’m coming to Chicago to try these delicate hot dogs!

A Chicago style hotdog, if you wanna get technical, is always

made with a Vienna beef hotdog.

And the casing of it has like a nice little snap to it, so

it’s not like super, super soft

I’ve always been convinced that’s plastic.

No, it’s probably just sheep intestine or something lovely like that.

Oh, yummy.

yummy.

Shall we move on to architecture?

And you’ve created your tour company around this part of Chicago.

Inside Chicago Walking Tours is the name of your company , so we are not just

talking about the exteriors of buildings sometimes, but maybe should we start

outside and we’ll work our way in?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the number one thing I would say to do in Chicago as a tourist

is an architecture river tour.

Anyway, after I had done that for six years and then worked as head of

product development for one of the big boat companies here, I just kind of

felt like this is somewhat limiting.

It’s a wonderful experience, but if that’s the only experience you ever get of our

architecture as the art that it is, then you’re really missing 80% of the equation.

And so you then went out, set up your own company and yours is walking,

so you’re much closer to the buildings, which maybe means you, you don’t get

that skyline view that people get from the water, but what do you get instead?

I would say that you get to really experience the

intentionality of the architects.

When I do river tours, I am always encouraging people, this is such

a beautiful view, but I can give you 90 minutes of a laundry list of

architects’ names and dates and style names and all that; you’re gonna forget

it as soon as you leave the boat.

But when you actually get out on foot and you can understand that this building has

a heaviness about it, and this one has a lightness about it, because this one

is coming from this era where they were exploring, you know, modern technologies

or this one wants a heaviness because they are trying to make you feel like

it’s been there a longer time than it has.

That’s the kind of thing, you just don’t have time, you don’t have the

perspective to teach about on a river.

And it’s, it’s storytelling architecture

tells a story in physical form.

Absolutely.

It really is an art.

Sometimes I feel kind of cheesy that I’m really hitting on this point for

people, but I’ll tell them, you know, you pay ticket prices to go and see

sculptures and paintings and whatnot at the Art Institute, but you could

just walk right into this building.

And this building, this is the final physical manifestation of

a series of drawings, a series of edits, a series of imaginations

and arguments and investments.

You can’t walk into the Mona Lisa, but you could walk into this building.

There’s an intentionality that I want people to appreciate about it.

Is there a building in Chicago that speaks to you the most?

I would say the Chicago Cultural Center is probably my favorite.

It’s right across the street from Millennium Park, where we have the Bean,

which is actually called CloudGate, but everybody knows it as The Bean.

I will ask a boatload of 200 people, ” who here has seen The

Bean?” And literally 200 hands go up.

And I’ll say, “okay, hands down, who here managed to get right across

the street from the Bean to see the world’s largest Tiffany Favrile Glass

Dome made of 30,000 pieces of Tiffany Favrile Glass, made mostly by women?”

And like three hands go up and people start looking at each other like, what?

How did we miss this?

It’s because we miss the things that are next to the famous things.

Maybe it’s because I’m a second born child that I think this way.

I, I’m the eldest, so I can’t comment on that one.

I’m sure there’s still plenty of Spotlight to go around.

You write your tours, don’t you?

You curate them.

Talk to me about how you do that part.

them, I put them together.

Back when I was first starting my business, for a couple of years, I was

just walking around, getting more and more interested in the city, at street level.

And I would literally just be walking on the street and I would kinda see

in a window and I’d be like, that looks interesting, and I would pop

inside, learn about the building.

I do still make all of the tours myself.

I now have nine guides, so I hire them, I train them.

It’s a very small business type of thing.

I have everybody over to my condo for Christmas, and I make my mom’s

spaghetti and meatballs for everybody.

It’s fun.

You know, I, I hire these people that I truly like and enjoy as people.

We’re all performers and teachers.

Everybody’s got a sense of humor.

They do the public tours, and I do mostly private tours and then boat tours.

Which of your tours are you most proud of creating,

That’s a really tough one.

So my very first tour that I created is still the most popular one, and I kinda

shot myself in the foot with the naming of it because I called it The World

Dazzling Interiors of the Loop.

But the problem is all of my tours go inside at least a few places.

Like that’s the whole point of the tours: Inside Chicago Walking Tours.

But so many people will contact me and say, “we wanna do the interiors

tour”, and I’m like, they’re all interiors tours, but they’re referring

to The World Within because they think that that’s the only one or.

that that’s the main one.

So I would say I’m most proud of that being my original, still

being the most popular in the meat and potatoes of the business.

And to get people who are in their seventies who say, I grew up in Chicago,

I’ve never been in this building.

And if you’re not from Chicago, you don’t even know where you’re allowed to go.

It gives people confidence ’cause Yeah, there’s no way I would

just let myself into a building which doesn’t advertise itself as public.

I’d be worried I’d get arrested.

Well, I’ll always tell people, if you don’t know where you’re allowed

to go inside, try opening the door.

The worst that could happen is it’s locked.

Or someone right inside tells you, I’m sorry, you’re not allowed to be in here.

You know, then your pride might be a little bit hurt, but you move on, but the

best that could happen is that you do find some kind of space that you have access to

and it might be a really beautiful space.

If people want to book onto your tours, how do they do that?

Where’s the best place to find out information and to do the booking?

I would say just directly through my website,

which is the name of my company.

Inside Chicago Walking Tours with an s.com InsideChicagoWalkingTours.com.

We have a tour schedule page, so you could book directly through that and then

whatever email you put in, that’s where your ticket confirmation is gonna be sent.

It’s got the starting location.

They all start in different places.

They all end in different places ’cause it’s different content.

And how far in advance is a really good time to do it because you

do limit the number of people that can go into each individual tour, right?

Yeah.

I would say.

It depends on when you visit.

If you’re planning to be here on a weekend, you definitely wanna

book at least a couple weeks out.

But if you’re like here for work and you’re here during the week, chances

are we’ll have space for you on a tour.

So even if it’s the next day, you know, it doesn’t hurt to check and see

if we have room on our tours for you.

And there’s, there’s a bunch of tour options too, and they all go

inside at least a few buildings.

I hope you’re enjoying my conversation with Hilary Marzec

from Inside Chicago Walking Tours.

As you have probably worked out already, she is your classic, inquisitive

researcher, so a walking tour with her or her team always unlocks something

unexpected… well, I mean, in this case, she unlocks doors that were never

locked to begin with, but you’d have just walked straight by without her.

Her website once again is www.insidechicagowalkingtours.com.

And while we’re on the topic of websites, if you’re enjoying this

conversation, you’ll probably have a great time exploring the

Destination Unlocked website too.

And that’s www.destinationunlocked.com.

You’ll find more conversations, blogs, articles, city guides, recipe cards.

If you feel passionately about homemade deep dish pizza… you are on your

own when it comes to boiling a Vienna and putting it in a hotdog bun.

And of course, it would be so great if you would consider subscribing to

Destination Unlocked wherever you are currently listening to this episode.

Alright, back to Chicago, and now it’s time for a quiz.

It’s you v Hilary.

Good luck.

So the mirrored icon that’s in Millennium Park is officially called what?

CloudGate,

Yeah.

And you said earlier that the nickname for it is The Bean.

For me, that is the most famous individual piece of public art in Chicago.

The Untitled Picasso sculpture that we have in Daley Plaza that’s been

And, and I always tell people it’s kind of a no-brainer, Like

how do you engage people in a public space through public art?

You give a gigantic mirror because we all like to look at ourselves.

Second question.

the pedestrian waterfront path that threads through the downtown area

along the skyscrapers is called what?

It depends which water you’re talking about.

You could be talking about the Riverwalk, running along the

main branch of the Chicago River.

You could be talking about Grant Park, which runs along Lake Michigan.

Maggie Daley Park also kinda runs right up to there, though you have

Lake Shore Drive running in between it.

You could be talking about Olive Park, which is on the north side of

Navy Pier that also abuts the harbor.

So there’s a whole bunch of answers for that one because

we are a water-based city.

You are racking up the points here.

You just got four points for a one point question.

Amazing.

You’re an overachiever.

I had the Riverwalk, but yes, I take your, I take your many points there.

This is question number three.

I think there’s only one answer to this one.

Which Architect’s former home and studio sits in Oak Park?

The fact that you said home and studio, I knew already before

you even said Oak Park that you were talking about Frank Lloyd Wright.

And here’s another little nugget of knowledge.

His mentor, he had many mentors, but the only one he ever really

admitted was his mentor was an architect named Louis Sullivan.

Frank Lloyd Wright worked for Louis Sullivan and Louis Sullivan loaned

him a few thousand dollars to build his home and studio in Oak Park.

And while he was using his boss’s money to build his home and studio,

he started taking commissions from clients under the table so he wouldn’t

have to pay Louis Sullivan for it.

And so he got fired.

Everybody knows Frank Lloyd Wright.

Louis Sullivan died too poor to afford his own tombstone.

So if people know about Frank Lloyd Wright, I wanna make sure they

know about Louis Sullivan as well.

Gosh, sneaky.

Sneaky!

I’m in shock.

Oh yeah.

Frank Lloyd Wright was definitely a jerk.

Gosh.

Ah, spill the tea.

Right.

The tea!

We’ve got a one letter answer next.

What is the nickname Chicagoans use for the elevated trains?

So we call it the L, which is a cutting of the word

elevated but we don’t spell it EL.

We just spell it with the letter L.

I was wondering why it was called the l and now it is so obvious.

Yep.

Yep.

It’s for the elevated train tracks.

Hmm.

It’s a visible part of our history.

and it’s not going to flood.

Yeah, exactly.

And you get a nice view of the buildings when you ride around downtown.

Final question in our quiz.

Chicago has been named the Best Big City in the US for how many consecutive years?

So you gave away the answer, you said nine, and I think

I would’ve gotten this one wrong because I would’ve said eight.

Conde Nast has been naming us the Best Big City in America and you

know, especially considering what’s going on in our country… I don’t

know what kind of news gets out but.

Chicago has recently been painted as this war zone.

It is so incredibly not true.

It just shocks me that, that a lie.

Such a bald face lie can be told about a place.

And I’m hoping that that lie is not affecting people who wanna visit Chicago,

’cause it’s just, it’s simply not true.

You managed to get nine points out of five, so I think

you did pretty well on that quiz.

I always make sure to do the extra credit at the

end of the test just in case.

I wanna go into a couple of sort of hidden gems as we get towards

the end of our chat about Chicago.

There’s loads to see.

We’ve spoken about some of the big ones, but, is there something which

could, you know, be an hour where it’s raining you’ve nipped inside somewhere

and it’s actually made your trip?

Personally, I think that the conservatories are a really lovely spots.

Those are those, uh, turn of the century greenhouses, these massive greenhouses.

We have two famous ones.

One is the Garfield Park Conservatory.

One is the Lincoln Park Conservatory, which is right next to the Lincoln

Park Zoo, which is one of the last free zoos left in the country.

And so the conservatories, I think, are a beautiful spot.

If it’s, you know, the middle of winter or it’s starting to get cold or it

starts raining to be able to dip in there and it feels almost tropical

and you’re just surrounded by plants.

I think that’s a really lovely kinda hidden gem.

I think also knowing about the Pedway and how to use it.

The Pedway is an underground system of about five miles worth of passages.

Sometimes it’s just lower levels of buildings.

Sometimes it’s tunnels going under streets.

We have a tour that I call Open Your Eyes: Chicago’s Underground Pedway, and Other

Secrets of the Loop because it’s a great system to know about if you do wanna get

out of the rain, get out of the cold, or even get out of the heat, you know,

you can stay in the air conditioning.

The ped way is essentially a walking Underground.

Exactly.

Ped as in pedestrian.

And what would you find actually down there?

Or is it just to get between things?

There’s all kinds of goblins and Batman and things like that… no,

it’s, it really is a transit system and there are certain parts that might go

through kind of commercial areas where they might have little shops down there.

So for example, there’s a section that goes through the lower level of

a development called Block 37, and that’s basically a big multi-story

mall in the middle of downtown Chicago.

You can literally fly in from England, take the Blue Line from O’Hare, get out

in the Blue Line station at Washington downtown, go through the Pedway through

Block 37, keep going through the Pedway, maybe go to Millennium Station, which is

an underground train station connected to the Pedway, take a train out to Indiana,

take one of their trains to get out to their airport and go back to England.

So like you could actually come to the United States without ever

having to go outside because we have these underground tunnel systems

that help us to avoid bad weather.

That sounds intriguing, but also terrifying.

And that’s part of the reason that I made a Pedway tour because you

do hear people of course being afraid of like, oh, but it’s Chicago, you know?

And my favorite thing is going on Facebook and seeing people posting

beautiful pictures of Chicago and saying, oh, it’s such a beautiful city.

And then some armchair revolutionary gets up on their comments and is

like, yeah, if you wanna get shot!

And so if then you add this kind of layer of mystery to it of, oh,

but these are underground tunnels, that must be even more dangerous.

And so I like to kind of bust those myths open and show people,

no, it really is manageable.

It is easily traversable.

It is good to know about because it’s just a functional system

There’s actually a very cool show.

It’s called Cities of the underworld.

Have you ever heard of it?

No, but I’m writing it down.

It’s a wonderful show.

It’s called Cities of the Underworld, and there is, I believe, a Chicago episode.

There’s also an Edinburgh episode, but the Chicago episode talks

about those different levels of tunnels under the city.

I will look that one up.

I’ve got one more question for you before our quick fire round to wrap us up.

And that is if, let’s say you, you’ve taken a week in, in Chicago, so

you’ve, you’ve got a nice amount of time and you wanna spend one of those

days actually outside of the city.

What would you say is an easy day trip that’s really worthwhile from Chicago?

Well, I think it depends on which season you’re visiting.

So I would say if you are visiting in the summer, it’s nice to go a

couple hours north into Michigan or along the Indiana, Lake Michigan,

lakeside, because there’s some really beautiful beaches, especially all up

the west side of Michigan as a State.

Lake Michigan is a giant glacial lake and it’s always cold, but the Chicago

side of it, the west side of the lake, because of the way the water moves

and kind of refreshes itself with warm water rising and cool water falling.

We get all the cold stuff, we still swim in it, but we get all the cold stuff.

So you can go to the beaches along the western coast of Michigan

and those are some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

So I would say for summer, do that.

I would say for fall, go to Star Rock State Park, which is about

an hour and a half from Chicago.

Hour a half, two hours.

And it’s these just beautiful sandstone bluffs and colors and walkways and it, it

is just a really, really beautiful spot.

Winter maybe visit Galena, which is an old historic town,

a few hours away from Chicago.

It’s very cute when it’s dressed up for Christmas.

Spring, I would say maybe go to someplace that has good gardens, like going up once

again, going up to Michigan, to Holland, Michigan for their Tulip festival.

Oh, brilliant.

Well, thank you.

We’ve got a whole year worth of day trips there.

Let’s do our quick fire round.

We’ll start with your top thing to see or do in Chicago.

I’m not saying this because I own the business, it’s to take

an interior architecture tour.

A river tour is gorgeous.

It gives you an overview… if you can do both, I think those

are the two sides of the coin.

Second one, A tourist trap to avoid.

Ooh, I hope I’m not gonna get in trouble with anybody for saying this.

I would say maybe any of those really gimmicky tours like a donut tour,

or the ghosts and gangsters tours.

It’s like when customers ask me a question about some gangster history, I’ll say,

well, tell me, do you wanna know the truth or do you want the, the narrative?

Yeah.

I would say those.

kinda gimmicky tours.

Maybe skip those and go for something that has a little bit more meat to its bones.

What’s your favorite time of year to visit?

Ooh.

Also a tough one because every season I feel like, oh, I really like this season.

’cause I’ve always been an autumn person.

I love autumn.

I’m wearing a flannel shirt right now for goodness sakes.

But I think that spring in Chicago is really breathtaking.

We are a very green city.

We have these amazing flower beds and medians that have the flowers in them.

Tulip time in Chicago is stunning.

Every single bulb is planted individually by workers, and it’s just,

it’s, it’s a beautiful time of year.

So I think spring, spring is the prettiest… summer,

probably the most stuff to do.

There’s all kinds of free programs.

I think because we, we weather the winter, the way that we do once

it starts to get a little bit warm outside the city is like, here, get

outside, do all these free things.

And so week by week there’s, there’s free neighborhood festivals,

there’s art festivals, there’s music festivals, Blues Fest, Jazz

Fest, Gospel Fest, House Music Fest.

The one that’s probably my favorite is the Chicago Summer Dance, a free dance

festival throughout the summer where you get free dance lessons to go with whatever

music is being played that evening.

That’s fantastic.

Amazing.

What would you say is the, your top book about Chicago?

Aside from all the architecture books, I would say The Devil in

the White City, by Eric Larson.

is America’s first documented serial killer HH Holmes, who used the popularity

of the, the fair to murder people.

It’s a historic fiction.

It really brings that whole moment of Chicago’s history to life.

And just learn so much about that moment of the World’s Fair.

Quarter of a century after so much of Chicago burned down in a great

fire, we got to reintroduce ourselves to the world and to ourselves.

And so we debuted things like the Ferris Wheel, which was meant to be

a competition to the Eiffel Tower.

It was really a fantastic moment in our history, and that book brings it to life.

What would you say is the top food or drink to try?

You said there’s so much in Chicago, but , if you had to pick one.

If I had to pick one, I tend to go to Italian beef, uh, which,

you know, when you grow up with something just being a thing, you

don’t realize that it’s a local thing.

I’ve had people say like, where do we go to get a good Italian beef?

I’m like, I don’t know, just go get one.

You know?

But it actually is a thing.

It’s essentially a roast beef sandwich on a special kind of bread that can take the

wetness of the beef that you put inside.

And when you order it, depending where you go, there’s a certain

kinda lingo that goes with it.

So if you get it dry, they’ll just take the meat out of the vat with

the tongs and they’ll shake it off and they’ll put it in the bun.

If you get it wet, they’ll not bother shaking it off.

They’ll put it in the bun and then they might put a little

ladle of the juice on it.

You can also get it dunked, which is what a lot of people do, where they

literally make the sandwich, then they take it with the tongs and they dunk it

in the juice that it just came out of.

So it’s a messy sandwich.

You can get it sweet, which is made with roasted bell peppers.

You can get it hot, which is made with giardiniera.

So you walk into an Italian beef place and you’ll say, I’ll have one sweet wet, and

they’ll know what you’re talking about.

Oh my gosh.

You gotta really know the code.

You do.

And uh, my final question is:

a top authentic souvenir to take home.

I’m, I’m not thinking of a fridge magnet that you can get from anywhere, but

what’s something that’s really Chicago?

I would say the first thing that comes to mind for me is craft

beers and spirits . I think that’s just kinda become a thing, people

like to have small batch craft things.

So I would say, if you do enjoy alcohol doing something like that,

like we have a local distillery called Koval, K-O-V-A-L, and that’s just

tucked up in one of the neighborhoods.

They make all kinds of whiskeys.

You can do a tasting there.

They make a whiskey just out of oats, which has a nice smooth finish

to it ’cause it’s made of oats.

For non-alcoholic, also something edible, I would say maybe some

Garrett popcorn, which is a big thing.

They do this caramel corn, they do cheese popcorn and ideally you

get those two together in what they used to call the Chicago mix.

And then they renamed it the Garrett Mix.

If you get the cheese one, you gotta make sure you have little

moist towelettes for your fingers because it dyes your fingers orange.

Hilary from Inside Chicago Walking Tours, thank you so much

for unlocking Chicago for us.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me.

It was really fun to talk with you.

That’s all for this episode of Destination Unlocked.

A huge thank you to Hillary Marzec from Inside Chicago Walking Tours for

helping us unlock Chicago from the Riverview and interior architecture to

deep dish debates and those gloriously messy Italian beef sandwiches.

If you’re planning a Chicago trip, go check out her tours, they’re

such a smart way to see the city.

And if you enjoyed this chat, hit follow or subscribe so you can find

your way back for our next journey.

For more interviews, guides and extra travel tips, head

to destinationunlocked.com.

I’m Daniel Edward.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you next time.