My kind of town

Like I said earlier, my friends and I took a trip downtown to go see Avatar in the IMAX theater at Navy Pier. I hadn't seen it, and it was pretty spectacular on such a big screen. I took some pictures on our way to Navy Pier - we had a walk from the shuttle stop and we also stopped into a park right before we went inside, since we were early.
I love looking at the lake on days like this. It was so gray that the water and the sky are the same color and you can barely tell where one ends and the other begins. It's days like these where you can look out across the lake from a distance and wonder if you stepped off the edge whether you'd just float in midair. On days like these, I could believe the world is flat.
Balls of light on miniature hills in front of the W hotel. I loved the little rolling hills, I could imagine the orbs of light bouncing up and down them.
My friends walking into the semi-sketchy tunnel under Lakeshore Drive to get to Navy Pier. My friend Andrew said it reminded him of Harry Potter - he was worried some dementors might come get him.
When we had gone through the tunnel and up some stairs, Navy Pier was in sight, but there was a little park right next to it, so I suggested we go in, since we were early anyway. If the name hadn't been "Milton L. Olive III" I'm not sure I would have been so eager, but I really liked the name.
The park
I love signs like this, especially in the winter, when ice is floating on the surface and the shore is covered with snow. I know there are people who are into that, but I am not one of them.
I love this city. One of my criteria when I was looking at colleges was that I had to be in or near a city. I chose near a city (for many different reasons) instead of in a city, but I think I get the best of both worlds.
The Ferris wheel on Navy Pier from the park. You can see it when you drive up Lakeshore, you can even see it from Evanston when you're sitting on the rocks by the lake. When the weather's nice, we'll go sit out there and in the fall they have fireworks on Navy Pier on the weekends, so we'll sit on the rocks and watch from campus.
On our way back through the park to get to Navy Pier. I love rows of streetlights like this. They're one of my favorite things to take pictures of. It always reminds me of art class. The line of the lights and the line of the sidewalk leading to a single point.
Navy Pier was still decked out for the holidays, as were some other places downtown. I love looking at carefully lit trees - the bare ones where the lights only go around the very outside of the branches, so they look like golden poofs of cotton candy.