I am finally getting around to writing about Chicago. Here is the first post. There will be more.
In the middle of June I went to Chicago to visit a former student of mine from Dobson, Amy. She has lived there for about 1.5 years and was gracious enough to put me up and put up with me.
The first night there, Thursday, we walked a bit down the lake and went to a pizza place to get Chicago style pizza. It was good, but way too much cheese for me, but it did feed us for a few days.
Amy took Friday off and we had a busy day. The week that I was there happened to be the same week that several museums had free days so on Friday we went to the Museum of Science & Industry. As did everyone and their mom. The museum was pretty good – lots of hands on stuff and had quite a few rooms to go through. In case you care, the museum is in the Palace of Fine Arts building from the Columbian World’s Expo from 1893. Here are some photos of the outside of the museum, along with the other museums that I saw on the trip (or view the photos here):
After the museum, we took a bus to get back up to downtown. Side note – I bought a week bus pass and it was well worth it! This happened to be the same day of the Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup victory parade, so even though the parade was over, traffic was still recovering. While we were crawling through Michigan Ave, the bus was behind an Oldsmobile, or something like that, from the 80s that was lifted so high that the driver’s head was even with the bus driver’s head. When people saw the car, they would stop, stare and then whip out their cameras or phones to take pictures. People even jumped out of their car, since we were not moving, to take a picture. If it wasn’t for the spectacle the car was creating, being stuck in the bus in traffic would have really sucked.
We got off the bus and went to the Hanckock Observatory to purchase a package deal of going up to the top of the tower and going on a 90 minute river/lake architecture tour. More on those next time.
did I ever get you to read The Devil In the White City? (about the building of the 1893 Expo) Even though I read the book, I was not aware that any of the architecture was still standing!
Yep – I read the book while I was in China. There are pictures in the museum showing the state of the Palace over the years that were pretty cool. It was actually abandoned for some time and had to go through major remodeling.