Chicago- Part Two City Pass

 OK, so the city pass purchase was totally worth it. We started out our day at Shedd Aquarium. The wait in line was ridiculous, but we were able to by-pass it with our city pass. It probably saved us at least an hour. I remember going to the aquarium as a child and it was just as amazing as an adult.  It's a mixture of depressing and interesting, watching these animals live in captivity and be stared at by humans, and "wow, I would never see any of this stuff unless I went scuba diving." At the same time the information that we gather from them and the way they live and are taken care of: they are fed, they are treated well (as far as I know), and they are studied so that we know what to do to prevent them from becoming extinct in their natural habitat.

One part of this aquarium I find really interesting is the avaliablity to touch some of the creatures. They have hand washing stations and lines of people/children waiting to touch sea cucumbers and star fish (which are really very soft). They also have a great lakes section where you can pet a Sturgeon.

We saw 4D movie on Prehistoric Sea Monsters. This was awesome. The chairs actually sprayed water and there were bubbles in the audience.

The second place we went today was the Field Museum. I was reminded of when I was a kid and I wanted to work in a museum. I would still gladly work in a museum. I should have done museum studies in college, anyway, we saw the Ancient Egypt 3D Movie and then looked through the exhibit. Part of it has been temporarily shut down, but there are still mummies in the basement and a lot information about ancient Egypt.

My favorite part of the museum has always been the upstairs gemstones and minerals collections, when I discussed this with Randy he thought it was a "Rock Collection" and began playing air guitar. He was disappointed.

While looking at the Bunky Echo-Hawk exhibit I noticed a painting he had painted called "If Yoda Were An Indian" and of course I had R2D2 on me, so I pulled it out to take a picture. I small child saw it and was instantly drawn to it. I handed it to him and he kept insisting he get his picture taken with it. The look he had when he saw the popcorn container was priceless.

The third place we went was the Planetarium. I am terrified of outer space and not really into it at all, but I figured this was a good time to overcome any of that anxiety. So we went. It was nice. I got to touch a moon rock, learn about the other planets, and we watched a show which took us into outer space to see the planets. It was very informative. We went to Saturn and Saturn's moon Titian, we got to see the volcanoes. I learned that sometimes in Neptune it rains diamonds made of methane, and we investigated Jupiter's Red Spot. It was a really good show, a little cheesy, but good.  We took R2D2 with us, (obviously we take him everywhere) and we put him on the space toilet in the kids section.

After all of this we were hungry. So we went down to the Navy Pier for dinner. We ate at Riva's and it was so good. Super $$$$$ though.  The view was phenomenal, because it looked right out onto Lake Michigan and all the beautiful boats.

Overall it was a wonderful day and we still had one more museum to go on our City Pass, either the John Hancock building/observatory or the Museum of Science and Industry. Even though I've been to the Museum like a million times I want to go back, maybe tomorrow.

Where we went:

http://www.sheddaquarium.org/
http://www.rivanavypier.com/index.html
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/

Chicago- Part One

I have had the fortune of only being only 159 miles from the city of Chicago. We live close enough to visit friends, family, and my husband's colleagues (other ice sculptors living in Chicago).  This time we ended up in Chicago because we bought a charity package which included an apartment in Chicago for the weekend. (It was a very nice apartment in a high rise and we had an excellent view of the city. Totally worth it just for the parking) So, the first thing we did was visit an ice sculpting studio to drop off equipment, because we needed to do that anyway.



The next thing we did was go to the Art Institute of Chicago. We got there an hour before it closed so it only cost us $10. I have been here before so this didn't really bother me to only see it for an hour. My husband didn't really care either. I wanted to see my favorite painting again, "A Sunday Afternoon On the Island of La Grand Jatte". It is a very large painting by Georges Seurat. This painting has always been my favorite, since I was a little girl. I wanted to see it. After I did see it, then I wanted to see the Seine (where it was painted in France) and I guess that goes into a rabbit hole of stuff I've done. Anyway, Randy had never seen it.  We looked at it for a few minutes. Discussed the strange little box in the back corner (I said I think it's a TARDIS, Randy said probably not, then we were on our way.)

We went to the Willis Tower next. It used to be the Sears Tower. We went to the top, I could feel it sway. We took lots of pictures on the glass ledge.  It was really cool. When we had to wait in  line there were a lot of questions and facts about the tower. It was an hour and a half wait. The fast pass cuts your time in half, my suggestion, get the fast pass and go on a week day. It was Saturday when we went and of course the weekends are busier. I've been before at night and it was pretty, but I really wanted to go during the day. I hadn't been up since the glass sky boxes were put in and that was really cool. Especially looking out and seeing other people in the other boxes.

We had dinner at a place called "Carnivale". It was really brightly colored and had lots of music and it was really nice. They has some pretty exotic Latin American food. It was pretty tasty.


We also walked around some parks and hung out with the sculptures. It was a pretty good first day. The buses weren't that hard to maneuver and finding a cab to take us places was easy too. I give the public transportation a B+, only because the bus driver tried to take out a taxi that wouldn't let him in. All the regulars on the the bus were kind of shaken up by it, but they also cheered, so I figured this wasn't typical. Please do not be afraid of taking the bus because of this one experience. It was cheaper and surely more interesting than a cab.

The second day we spent shopping in Gurnee Mills. That is nice too. Next we head to Shedd Aquarium and a lot of Museums! That will be in Part two. Forgive me, I didn't bring my camera, just my phone.

Here's where we went:

http://www.carnivalechicago.com/
http://theskydeck.com/
http://www.artic.edu/

http://www.citypass.com/chicago?mv_source=rkg&creative=48663209189&adpos=1t1&device=c&network=g&matchtype=e&gclid=CPnw9_3W1r8CFVIQ7AoduW0ANw