Advertisement
Published: November 16th 2010
Edit Blog Post
First off, I have a recommendation for anyone planning on travelling over the border to the United States: do not agree to drive your brother from Windsor, Ontario to Chicago, Illinois and then proceed to pack him into the car full of stuff with which your moving across the country. Why? Because, upon entering the United States you will look very suspicious and they will have to both search you car and have it sniffed out for drugs...Not that I know from experience...hahaha. The good thing is that we made it to Chicago only an hour behind schedule, so it wasn't so bad. Actually, we stayed not directly in Chicago but in a little town outside of the city called Naperville to stay with friends of my parents: Uday and Laurie. Uday was actually a university buddy of my father's and Laurie is his wife. They have three children; Ben, Chad and Tessa. We were treated like royalty in their beautiful home, Ben was even nice enough to lend us his bedroom while we were there. Drew go Tess's room, but for her it wasn't so bad because he only stayed two nights.
So, on our first evening Uday
took us our for Mexican food, it was really great (so different from what we can get in N.S.). We hung out around Naperville, and he showed us the sights. We were looking for a bar actually, to see some live jazz music. Unfortunatly, the only place in town that might have had some wasn't playing any that night. So, instead we went for a nice walk along the river and saw some really cool statues. Not to mention, we got to spend time with Uday and he told us all kinds of stories of our Dad in his univeristy years...I had no idea!! (Don't worry though Dad, your secrets are safe with us 😉
Day two, Saturday, we got to spend with Laurie and what a riot we had! She drove us down to the famous Navy Pier where we took a lovely achitectural tour down the Chicago River. Now, this may not sound like fun to some of you, but there are a lot of famous buildings and people that have moved through that city. We even got to see some of the places that the Christopher Nolan's Batman series were shot. After touring and wandering through
the city, we finished off the day wining and dining at the (again) famous Gino's pizza place. Drew and Christian got to enjoy the traditional Chicago deep dish pizza. Laurie tasted some pasta and I (sigh) got to have a salad...again.
Sunday, we took the train back into Chicago. We had to drop Drew off at Union station, for he was heading back to Windsor. Christian and I on the other hand, had more touring to do. We started by going up the 103 floors of the Sears (ahem...I mean Willis) Tower. It's quite a spectacle they have, tour guides, professional photo's, souvenier shop's, etc. I have to say though, the most fun was seeing the protruding glass floors. You can stand out on a piece of glass that hovers 103 stories above the ground. It was a little nerve wracking, and similar to the glass floor experience we had at the CN tower: people were crawling across the floor, as if that would make it less dangerous...Pretty funny to watch anyways. After that, we decided that we wanted to see the Buckingham fountain and take a little stroll through the park. I must say, it was beautiful. A
beautiful day, sunny and hot, and a very artsy and well kept garden. (More weddings in the garden, of course). We had planned on seeing the Aquarium that day, unfortunatly it was closed by the time we got there (time flys when you're in Chicago). So we headed back over to Union station, and took a train back to Naperville.
So, to keep our story short, over the next few days we went to Wrigley Field (which unfortunatly we didn't get to tour, as the last day for tours was the Saturday before) the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum. The latter three of the four are part of what's called the "Museum campus". The Aquarium was like any other, interesting but nothing special. The planetarium and the Field Museum on the other hand you can spend a day in; each. In the planetarium we got to see two shows which are both in a huge dome, like a solarium. The first of the two we had a guided tour of the night's sky, specifically about the stars, constellations and cycles. The second, which was narrated by Whoopi Golburg, was about the formation of stars and
the galaxy. It was so fascinating. Though, I have to warn you if you should ever go; those who have motion sickness may want to stay away. It is a movie in a dome, which spins and soars you around the galaxy. If you need proof of this, you could just ask the French gentleman who had his own big bang and spilled his galaxy all over the seat in front of him! As for the Field Museum, we could have easly spent weeks in there. It is the home of Sue, the largest almost fully constructed fossil T-Rex in the world. While we were there, there were displays on, among others, Egypt, Africa, insects, wild animals and of course the dinosaurs. We had to run through parts of it, just to get an idea of everything that was there.
One final note: for all who are interested we would like to clear up a long running confusion as to why the great city of Chicago is called " The Windy city". Contrary to popular belief and to our surprise as well the city is not named for it's turbulant weather, but rather for the long winded nature (in
other words: hot air) of the many politicans that have graced the city of Chicago since the early 1920s.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0517s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb