The Skydeck at The Willis Tower

Imagine this: A 1,353 foot(412 meters) building with 103 floors. Now picture yourself going to the 103 floor, stepping into a glass box that is attached to the side of the building, and staring down at the ground. This is the experience you get when going to the skydeck at The Willis Tower. I recently visited Chicago about a month ago and it is a beautiful city! I had heard about the skydeck before going and I wanted to visit it during our stay.

So first off, what is the skydeck and the Willis Tower. The Willis Tower is most commonly known for being the tallest building in Chicago. As I mentioned earlier it is a whopping 1,353 feet tall! Many people may still refer to The Willis Tower as "The Sears Tower". This is because the building used to be named the Sears tower for the longest time until a couple years ago. The building is used for various business offices and what not. It was originally created as almost like a headquarters for the company of Sears.

The skydeck is a new addition/attraction to the building and just opened a couple years ago. It is on the 103 floor of the building at the very top of the building. It is most commonly known for the glass boxes that come out from the side of the building in which people can step in and look down at the ground outside and at some of the city of Chicago. While the glass boxes are cool, there are many more cool things to the skydeck.

We arrived at The Willis Tower around lunchtime. The line for the skydeck was HUGE! We were very hesitant to go because the line wrapped around the corner of the building, but then a man told us that it was only about a 15 minute wait to get in the building. The man was right, we were in the building in no time!

Once we arrived in what seemed like a very small lobby we waited in line to get to the elevator. The line passed through a cool gift shop with nice t-shirts and other things relating to Chicago. The elevator, rather than take you straight up, takes you down a couple floors.

We stepped out of the elevator and went over to bag checks and then got our picture taken in front of a green screen. We bought our tickets and then entered another waiting room.

This one was the waiting room to enter the movie. We entered the small theatre and watched a short movie on the history of The Willis Tower. It was a pretty cool movie! It was not boring at all and had some pretty cool facts in it, such as why the building was designed the way it was and how it became The Willis Tower.

After the movie we entered yet another waiting room. This was the line to enter the elevator to the skydeck. I liked this waiting room a lot because it had many cool facts and pictures on the wall. There was pictures comparing the height of the Willis Tower to other tall skyscrapers around the world. It also had pictures of famous people such as Oprah and Barack Obama and it would tell you how many of them stacked would equal the height of the tower. Finally we arrived at the elevator to take us to the top floor, the skydeck.

Entering the elevator we had to squeeze to the back so that the most possible people could fit. It was very cramped in there! Then it happened, we started going up to the top! The elevator had a cool TV screen that counted the floors we were on. The numbers were going by so quickly because we were going so fast. In a matter of seconds my ears needed to pop. Then the elevator stopped.

We stepped out onto the top floor of the Willis tower, number 103. As we looked up we could see the city surrounding us. There were giant windows on all sides of the floor to show us the beautiful city of Chicago. We walked around the floor to see all of the angles of the view of the city.

Then we saw the glass boxes. There was so many people trying to get in and it looked like chaos. There were 4 boxes. Three of them were a free for all where anyone can go in at anytime and the 4th had a line if you wanted a picture in one. We went in a free for all one. We finally got up to the box after shoving past the huge clump of people. I stepped inside and it was awesome! I was looking straight down at the ground. I looked ahead and saw the busy life of the city. It was an awesome experience. We stepped out and looked around at some of the facts they had on the walls, bought t-shirts from the gift-shop, and then went down the down elevator to leave the skydeck.

What was so great about the skydeck was the fact that rather than just having a boring line the whole time they had fun things along the way to keep you occupied, and of course the glass boxes were also cool and so was the view from the top. Overall it was a great experience that I suggest everyone should do if they are ever in Chicago.

Harbor East & Fells Point

Harbor East is an area of Baltimore that has been growing within the past couple of years. It lays on the CHesapeake Bay and is very close to downtown Baltimore. Personally, I enjoy Harbor East more because I feel like it looks nicer and newer. The picture to the left is one I took of the main circle of Harbor East. The big buildings over there are mainly hotels. It is amazing how they made this area so much nicer because years ago it would be unsafe to walk over to this area of Baltimore.

When you walk into Harbor East you eventually end up at Fells point. This is a nice area with many small, local shops. If you look to the right, I took that picture early in the morning. It is at Fells point and there was a very nice sunrise. Fells point is a great place to walk around and look at all of the cool shops. The streets are made of stones which I always find neat. This is one of my favorite places to walk in Baltimore because you get a good view of the bay area and it is a nice area just to socialize. As I said, many years ago it would have been unsafe to walk from Harbor East to Fells Point. I think it is great how if we take the initiative we can make this world such a nicer and friendlier place.

Standing Up For Yourself And Your Intrests

Hi all you followers of the CAB Blog out there. Yes, I am back from my February hiatus. It was a busy month for me so I had to take a break, so I apologize for that. In this post though I want to talk about something besides traveling. I figured I needed to get this off my chest and I'm up for changing things up occasionally haha. I want to talk about standing up for what you believe in, and what you're passionate about. These two things are extremely important in life because without them, there would be no diversity in our thoughts and we would all think the same things. The reason I am randomly bringing this up is because about a month ago during January and even before that a little, I was going through some what of a rough time with the blog. One of my friends would tell me that this blog wasn't good enough and that it "sucked" and had "terrible grammar". One day he and another friend were reading it, almost mocking it. I can't tell if they had that intent to mock it or not but it seemed so. Throughout all this I basically sat there and let this friend of mine tell me that my blog was bad and I let him do this. I did not stand up for myself or for what I believe in. Looking back on it, I should have. I needed to stand up for it, because the blog is my passion. It feels like the one place I can go to and just share my experiences with the world, and for a couple months my friend was ruining that for me. Friends are supposed to support you, not put you down. He made me feel like no on read this blog, which is not the case. Even if it's only people I know reading it, those people are still people that are my true friends and family and they support me in what I do and they are there fro me when I am in the dumps. They don't put me down about the things I love to do. This friend that I have may not know how much I enjoy this blog, but if he makes fun of it again, i'll make sure he knows how much effort and my own time I put into this blog. Sorry for the rant everyone but the lesson here is, stand up for what you believe in and love and when people are putting you down about those things, then they may not be worth your time. But I want all of you to know that no matter what anyone says, keep doing what you love, and stick with it in good times and bad. Thank you.

Epcot in Disney World

Epcot is Disney World is probably my favorite park out of the 4. As someone who enjoys traveling, naturally this park would be my favorite. Essentially, Epcot consists of many different sections and each section is made to look like a certain country. The reason this works so well is because they really emphasized every detail and made everything authentic. Disney is notorious for going all out on anything they produce, which I think is great. Some countries I really like in Epcot are...
- Great Britain: I love the fish and chips here and I enjoy the cobblestone streets and the buildings made to look like a street.
- Morocco: This country has many different rooms and back alley ways that have nice tiles on them.
- Italy: I enjoy the courtyard with the tower and fountain. Its very nice to walk through
- China: All of the buildings are so extravagant and colorful. The food is also very good here!
- Mexico: I like how it takes you into a temple like structure and it is very dark inside but it is made to seem like you are in Mexico at night. I think that is awesome.
I also like the rides they have at Epcot, especially Test Track!

Comment telling me what your favorite countries are in Epcot! Thanks see you next time

Central Park

I took this photo is Central Park, located in New York City. Central Park is a classic place to go when you are visiting NYC. It is a great area of the city to walk, run, ride a bike, take pictures, relax, hang out with family, etc. There are so many things to do there that I could not even list them all. I think my favorite part about central park is the fact that even though it is in the middle of the biggest city in the U.S., I don't feel as though Im in the city. It feels like a completly different place. It almost takes you out of the craziness and business that is NYC. It is a great place to go to just to take a break from the chaos of life.

Blue Winter Forest

I found this picture interesting because of the color and the setting. The fact that I can feel how cold it must have felt wherever the picture was taken was enough to make it stand out to me. Comment below telling me your thoughts on this photo. Thanks everyone, see you next time.

Country Road

This picture is something I found online and was one of those pictures that made me think, "Hey I wanna go there". Those are the types of pictures I put on the CAB blog. Everything for me works in this photo. The colors are outstanding and so defined. I like the sky also, because at first glance it appears as grey, but if you look closely there is a blue-ish glow that embodies it. This place, wherever it may be, seems like a great place to take a walk, without a care in the world.