Chicago Weekend Fun!

One of my favorite things to do when I give tours of Chicago to friends, family and co-workers is to take a Chicago River Tour on Wendella Boat Tours. They have been in business since my parents were kids and know the best way to give a tour if the river with all the history and stories about the buildings and about Chicago. The only person who might be better at it would be Geoffrey Baer from WTTW Channel 11 on PBS. He has put together the TV Chicago Boat Tour program called Chicago by Boat: The new river tourand Chicago by EL. But, he is a busy guy making TV programs and isn’t available for daily tours on the Chicago river, so we will just go via Wendella boat tour and enjoy the day and the view.

If you want to take one of these tours it’s easy to just show up downtown (400 N Michigan Ave) at about a 1/2 hour before these tour times to buy tickets: 10:00 am, 11:00 am, 12:30 pm, 1:45 pm, 3:45 pm, 5:15 pm or 6:30 pm by the Michigan Avenue Bridge and go down to the river by the Wrigley Building (yes the Gum company). You can see the Wendella Boat Tours sign hanging below the Wrigley building on the opposite side of the river from Wacker Drive. It is on the North West corner of the Michigan Ave bridge and directly across the street from the Equitable building and the Tribune Building. There are stairs doing down to the river front and they sell tickets there. (special handicapped access note: if you can not go up or down stairs I would not attempt this tour. The river is about 30 stairs lower than the street and there is no elevator access available because this is all outdoors. I am sure they don’t mean to do this on purpose, it is just a factor of the old buildings and access to the river) It is a great tour though and it only costs $22 dollars for an hour tour. (for kids age 11 and under tickets are $11.00, Kids under 3 are free) They do accept credit cards and they do not allow alcohol, baggage or strollers on the boats for safety purposes. The boats are large slow moving boats that slowly float down the river and don’t have much turbulence or rocking. I would say they are like a barge since they are long and flat, but they aren’t as long as a barge. They also conveniently have restrooms on the boats.

The specialty Chicago Tour that they originated is the Chicago Architectural Tour. They have the best tour guides I have ever seen. (I have gone 3 times)They know all the history on all the buildings in Chicago and some of the tour guides are people who used to work in the buildings or worked for the companies that built them. They also offer a combined Chicago River and Lake tour that will take you all the way down the Chicago river and then back out to Lake Michigan to see the city skyline. They also have Chicago at Sunset Tours, Chicago Wine Tasting Tours and Summer Fireworks Lake Michigan Cruises. All this is active between March and December in Chicago.

New this year in 2007 and will probably be back in 2008, is the Chicago Water Taxi service. The Wendella people have painted a boat yellow and they just run it between the Wrigley building dock at Michigan avenue and a dock close to Union Station. It only costs $2.00 (which is way cheap) and you get the best view of the city and a shorter commute back to the train from Michigan Avenue. What a way to travel! I have not seen many people using this service though. Only 5 or 6 people are on the boat on any given day and I can’t imagine that $12.00 a run covers the cost of the boat, fuel and whatever city licensing fees there are to dock there. 

If you are driving in from the suburbs to go on a Wendella Boat Tour they recommend parking at the State and Kinzie Wabash self park on 401 North State Street (owned and operated by Standard Parking) is located at which can be accessed off of Wabash Avenue. Guests of Wendella can receive $5 off parking. To receive the discount just ask for a “chaser” coupon from our ticket office at the time of your ticket purchase. They are happy to validate the parking like this to help out with the $25.00 cost. (parking in the city is expensive, if you can get downtown by train it is far cheaper)