On Sunday — which on a holiday weekend, feels like a Saturday — we went to the city and spent some peripatetic hours showing around our niece Yuika (and first cousin of our children). She’d never been to Chicago before. We took a water taxi from near Union Station to the dock under the Wrigley Building, headed north on Michigan Ave., east through River North, eating there, then south again along State St. and eventually to Millennium Park.

It was absolutely nowhere new for me, except for a shop on Michigan Ave. that wasn’t there until recently, and a newly remodeled interior of a hotel we ducked into, to use the lobby bathrooms. Yet I enjoyed the walk. Part of it was walking with someone who’d never seen any of these streets or any of the changes over the years; someone for whom Chicago was previously just the name of a large city. Besides, the city was very much alive with residents, tourists and service workers, despite it being a Sunday.

I’m glad to report that the statue of Nathan Hale, which stands in front of one of the Tribune Tower entrances, decided to participate in whatever consciousness-raising a red rubber nose is supposed to promote.

I had only the vaguest notion of it. Anti-poverty, I think. It would be so very easy to look it up, but I’m going to pursue willful ignorance in this case, since it smells of something invented to show off celebrities as much as to further a worthy cause.

In the northern section of the Tribune Tower is the brightly colored Dylan’s Candy Bar, which apparently opened earlier this year.

It’s the latest of 10 locations nationwide, with others in New York, Los Angeles, a couple of airports and some other places where the retail formula Make Something Simple Elaborate works well. There’s a certain genius to that approach, after all, as the foundation (for example) of the Starbuck’s empire.

Further north on Michigan Ave. was Gold Gurl.

Gold Gurl is not, I suspect, one of several exactly like her, but the only one, though across the street another character standing on a platform moved to the beat periodically, as Gold Gurl did after standing perfectly still for a while. I had Ann drop a 50-cent piece in Gold Gurl’s collection bucket. Busking needs to be supported in this city.