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Published: October 18th 2008
The Bean
It might have another name, but it looks like a bean to me.Chicago is a clean friendly unpretentious New York. I’d choose Chicago over New York any day.
After the parade (see previous post) I went to the Navy Pier which about a mile of funfair, theatres, restaurants and boat tour operators, unfortunately just as I got there everything was closing so I just had a nice quiet walk along the pier anyway.
The following morning on the recommendation of one of hostel staff I headed down to the Millennium Park. Parts of the park are still being built, but the bits that are finished look really smart and modern. It has a huge area where I guess they hold music concerts and in the centre of the park is a huge metallic bean. I’m not sure what the significance of the bean is, but it looks quite impressive. If you stand directly underneath you can see lots of reflections of yourself.
In the afternoon I visited the Museum of Contemporary Photography then got the metro down to the Museum of science and Industry. I love science museums, and this has to be one the best one’s I’ve visited. There are about 20 different exhibitions on ranging from Space exploration (which
includes the real Apollo 8 landing capsule, to a mock up of the inside of a warship. It also has real submarine inside, but that cost extra.
The Chicago H.I. (Hostel International) is also one of the best hostels I’ve stayed in, it’s a bit shabby around the edges, but the staff where really friendly and they had a lot of organised activities, like free ice-cream on a Tuesday afternoon. That evening there was an organised trip to a bar called the Map Room. This is a bar in one of the suburbs of Chicago with an international theme; it’s got about 20 international draft beers and well over 100 bottles beers. Every Tuesday they invite a local restaurant to come over cater for the evening and if you buy two drinks you can eat for free. On the night I went they were serving Filipino food, I’m not sure what it was I was eating, but there was defiantly pork rice and some sort of Pasty. There was also a desert of “purple cake” which strangely was served on the same plate as the main course.
Wednesday morning was spent with a hangover in the Laundry. My
train left a 2pm so I couldn’t really fit anything else in. I’m currently winding my way through the Rocky Mountains, 24 hours into the 54 hour journey to San Francisco. I’ll write another post about it.
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