ESSENTIALS GETTING THERE

Take a riverside cruise, main, Jimmy Burns at Buddy Guy’s Legends, left; below, Joseph Mozier’s ‘Pocahontas’ 66. The American mother road began at the junction of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue. Since they shifted it a few blocks south, only Lou Mitchell’s diner at 565 West Jackson remains as a throwback in neon.

For Americans, Chicago’s Americana is architectural. Chicago is to the skyscraper what Los Angeles is to film or Nashville to country music – you get them elsewhere, but nothing beats the original.

The Loop – Chicago’s downtown – jostles with a century’s worth of spires and towers. To walk around is not just to shop at Bloomingdale’s or experience the cinematic thrill of elevated trains rumbling above roads. It’s to feel the upward thrust of American cities, their modernity and futuristic excitement. Chicago has all the pizzazz of Manhattan but none of the attitude, or litter. No one snarls when you stop to gawp.

Start at Michigan Avenue Bridge for prime wow factor. Or for the most exhilarating skyline in the States go up the city’s tallest building, Willis Tower. The escalator takes a minute to ascend 1,353ft (your ears pop), then you edge over oblivion on the glass floor of the highest viewing platform in the western hemisphere.

“What you don’t see is the creativity,” said my guide, Ronnie. We were on a Chicago Architecture Foundation tour boat, cruising along the Chicago river through a canyon of skyscrapers: art deco spires, modernist boxes and sleek glassskinned arcs. “You don’t see the deep foundations that got those buildings to stand up.”

The thing is, Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan, should be a swamp; one theory explains its name as the native American word for wild onions. As impressive as its existence, is that Chicagoans erected the world’s first skyscraper just 14 years after the first t Chicago burned down in 1871. They haven’t stopped since.

If chutzpah is one reason why Americans admire Chicago, another is that this is a city that clearly enjoys its ts river. After 1871 it aspired to be a

Paris of the prairies. Last year it came e good, opening the mile-long Riverwalk promenade. Lined with waterside café-bars, it’s the Seine with skyscrapers.

The other big sight is the Art Institute; it’s big in size (300,000 exhibits – including Joseph Mozier’s Pocahontas, right) and status. But it seemed a daft to visit America only to o tour the largest collection of French impressionists outside the Louvre.

So, I went to the new American Writers Museum. Local boys Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler r were there, also Mark Twain and JFK K and Martin Luther King Jr. Reading their quotes, I began to understand James Stewart was a guest of Choose Chicago (choosechicago. com) and Norwegian Airlines (norwegian. com), which offers flights from London Gatwick to Chicago from £149.90 one way. what made this city, perhaps America itself, tick: a dogged belief in freedom; a determination to kick against authority.

You hear it in Chicago Blues. Singers like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Ho Wolf invented its electrified electri blues when they arrived in the Fifties Fif fleeing southern oppression. oppres Without its sound there’d be no Rolling R Stones. I wanted to experience experi it raw on Saturday night.

First, First though, dinner. It’s a mystery why C Chicago brags about being the home o of deep-dish pizza. It’s a sloppy quiche best served with a defibrillator. Just don’t. do Not when eating well is so easy here. he Telegraph Travel- approved options option include central RPM Steak; glamorous glamor Maple & Ash in Gold Coast, Chicagos’s Chicag smartest neighbourhood with the most central of its 26 beaches; be and the melt-the-inmouth mo Italian beef sandwich at Jay’s Beef B in Wicker Park, a Chicagoan Brooklyn Brookl of brew-pubs and hipster shops. “Best beef sandwich in America said USA US Today,” Uber driver Rich told me en route.

For fine-dining local-style there’s The Duck D Inn, where, in a former (architecture. org) last for an hour and a half, depart from a wharf at Michigan Avenue Bridge and cost $47. An adult ticket to the Art Institute of Chicago (artinstitute ofchicago.com), at 111 South Michigan Avenue, costs $25, while the American Writers Museum (american writersmuseum. org) is at 180 North Michigan Avenue, priced $12. The latter is closed on Mondays. Book your free Chicago Greeter tour at chicagogreeter. com. from $30 more. Mains at

Maple & Ash (mapleandash. com), 8 West Maple Street, cost from $28, but an Italian beef sandwich at Jay’s Beef ( jaysbeef.com) in Wicker Park at 2255 W North Avenue will only set you back $6.25. Bargain. Catch an Uber to The Duck Inn (theduckinn chicago.com), at 2701 South Eleanor Street: small plates start at $10, the five-course menu costs $66.