So I know I'm like two weeks late on this post but oh well, things have been nuts since we got back! Over the 17th Maddie, Linda and Myself all jetted off to Chicago to do some sightseeing. My particular favorite piece of scenery was Gavin, who'd been there for 5 weeks.We packed a whole lot of stuff into our four and a half (you can't really count the day we landed since we got in at 7) days that we were there. We decided to buy CityPasses and that was definitley the way to go. Not only did it let us in to 5 very cool places for free but it also let us bypass most lines and go right in.
We went to 5 different museums in 2 days. All of them were enormous and we could have easily spent a day each on most of them. The Field Museum of Natural History was incredible and has the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found. The Aquarium was way fun with large underwater viewing areas where you could watch whales and sharks. The Art Institute was enormous, it covers about 2 city blocks and is a three storied maze of beautiful works (including the 2nd largest collection of French impressionism in the country). We all got mildly motion sick on the Skydeck, even though you couldn't really feel the building swaying. And lastly, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry, sounds really boring but OH MY GOSH!!! It was awesome! Definitely a must see, especially if you have kids. It was so big that most of it is between 3 and 4 stories underground. It had full sized trains, tractors and antique fire engines. One whole wing was devoted to weather and natural phenomenon so there were avalanche and tsunami simulators, a giant wind tunnel that generated a small tornado. Plus an actual German U-Boat in the basement. It was way cool.
Saturday, when Gav was with and not at work, we went on a tour of the old Chicago Theater and then went over up to Lincoln Park to escape the press of green people who had come out in force to show chi-rish pride for St. Patty's. We walked around the park for an hour or two then headed back to the city. We did a little shopping on the "Magnificent Mile", a large high end shopping district, and then went to Navy Pier. We sat on the end of the Pier and then walked down and had dinner at Harry Carrey's Tavern. It had really good food and had a small sports museum running through the middle of it.
Sunday, we had to leave for the airport at 2 so we decided to go on the Untouchables Tour that Maddie had found in a magazine the night before. It was a two hour tour and it was really interesting to hear some of the stories and history from the cities most infamous time period. We definitely went through some parts of the city that we wouldn't have gone to, and I don't recommend you go to them outside of this tour. Sadly most of the sites were no longer there, the only two sites that really remained standing were the Holy Name Cathedral and the movie theater where John Dillenger was shot.
It was such a fun trip and we saw so much! Including the Chicago river dyed bright green (they take they're St. Patty's very seriously). On the whole a great weekend and a place I'd definitely recommend.
