More Chicago Than You Can Handle

Today: Chicago, IL

The plan for today was to use Chicago's mass transit system to get from our hotel down to the Magnificent Mile, which is Chicago's cultural/shopping/tourism area and to whatever else we wanted to see. If you read the previous post, you know that the traffic here is bad - really bad. So, mass transit seemed to be the ticket. They have a day pass that was reasonable (compared to having to drive), and we had plotted out our route with bus numbers and trains to catch. Everything was lined out except when we went to meet the bus, we couldn't find a sign designating where the bus stop was. A local told us to wait across the street, but when the bus came, it just drove right by us. There must have been a sign somewhere, but I never saw it.

We took the back roads to get to the park-n-ride center where we were able to get our day passes and get on the train. After a nice (but slow) train ride, we switched trains and ended up a block or two from Michigan Ave (which is the Magnificent Mile).

The first thing that caught our attention was Millenium Park. Melissa wanted to see it and take some pictures, so we walked over. There we encountered two large glass brick structures that were a huge waterfall exhibit. The brick walls were back-lighted and would show a picture of a face every so often. The area around the structure was like a small wading area where the water was maybe 1 inch thick. Lots of kids were running around in the water and having lots of fun, so we let the kids do the same.

After getting all wet, we continuted to walk through the park a little. This is a large "coffee bean" shaped structure. It's kind of cool but the underlying meaning is lost on me. Who needs more to art than to imitate a coffee bean?




We walked down Michigan Ave. for a bit and stopped for lunch at a little "trendy Italian" chain place. It was pretty good and it was so late for lunch that we missed the crowd. After we ate, we kept on going toward the Field Museum, which was at the top of our list. We came across some more public art. It was kind of cool, but this grassy area seemed to be a popular homeless hangout.

As we were walking on their nice, new, pedestrian bridge over the train tracks, we saw Soldier Field in the distance.

...some more walking...

...and finally - the Field Museum! It was too hot (and humid) to be walking, but we made it.

We went through the Nature Unleashed exhibit and saw lots of interesting things about Volcanos, Hurricanes, Tornados, Earthquakes, and Tsunamis. The kids thought it was cool and I did too. They even had a little movie from a tornado researcher who had made a cone-shaped device with a bunch of cameras in it that video-recorded a tornado as it passed over it. There were items that had been damaged in the Katrina flooding and in some tornados.

We went and saw Sue's head (their T-rex). There were so many other things to see that we didn't get to see even half of them because the museum was closing. We went down to the Egyptian exhibit and the boys and I ran through it really quickly. They had a mummy on display and sarcophagi and many other relics and artifacts.

After the museum, we took the convenient water taxi over to the Navy Pier. The Chicago Childrens Museum is in the Navy Pier building, so we stopped by. They were having free admission, so we had to go in! The kids had a good time running around and seeing the different things in the museum. The real winner was an activity that had the kids try to build something that would float down gently when raised up a conveyor belt and dropped from very high. I think they could have stayed for hours doing this, but after a while we had to head out. We walked a little further down navy pier, got a couple of souviners and some chili cheese fries, and then had to go. We didn't get to see everything we wanted to see by any means, but we did what we could.

We got on the bus to get back to the train and it soon filled completely with people trying to get home from work. After a loooong bus ride, we got to the train and got on to get back to the truck. The train was slow too and at one point we had to wait for the south-bound train to go before we could continue because construction had the train down to one set of tracks. What a mess!

We got back to the truck and went by Gino's East pizzeria to get some real, deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza. It took 45 minutes to make, so we went by the grocery store and got some gas. The 7-11 had the gas pumps right next to the store. that was the first time we had ever seen that before.

Back at the hotel, we ate our pizza. Jaden said that the thin-crust cheese was the best he had ever had. I liked the meat-lover's deep dish that we got, but Melissa didn't. We got in bed late and will probably get a late start tomorrow to miss the traffic. We have to pick up Route 66 in downtown Chicago. Wish us luck!

Below: Chicago skyline/building pictures