I didn’t think much about the Chicago River when I lived here decades ago. I paid attention to it on St. Patrick’s Day, when it was dyed kelly green, but otherwise it was more of an embarrassment than anything else.

This began to change around the time I left. There was a clean-up-the-river campaign. There were new buildings by premier architects. And there was the river walk, built to rival San Antonio’s — which it certainly does.

There were so many facts in yesterday’s architectural river tour that I can only remember a fraction of them. We saw the tallest building designed by a woman and learned of a building that could not support its marble facade and was refaced with granite.

We saw the Merchandise Mart, Navy Pier and Sears (now Willis) Tower.  We marveled at the reflective glass that gave us a picture of the buildings behind us.

Most of all, we (or at least I) caught our breath at the beauty of it all, at the majesty of the great city spread out before us, all glittering water and glass.