First Journey inside the USA – Chicago (Final)

Well, this is the last post about my trip to Chicago, Illinois, but it’s no less exciting.

We started the day, it was a Saturday, saying goodbye to the hotel and the downtown. Our destination was The Field Museum near Michigan Lake. We thought that we could spend three hours inside the museum and see all the exhibits, but we were wrong. The museum is huge! We spent about six hours, and we still left some exhibits behind.

We started from the ground level, where we saw some sea mammals, one gorilla and the exhibition about ancient Egypt. We also came back to this level later to eat at MacDonald’s (fast and reliable).

After ancient Egypt, we went to the main level, where you have the main entrance with Sue (the T-Rex skeleton). On this floor, we saw almost everything; we started with ancient Americas, passing through the Northwest Coast and Arctic peoples, Pawnee Earth Lodge, and North American Indians. After that, we definitely walked through the nature section, and then we passed by the world of birds, world of mammals, Africa animals, lions of Tsavo, and reptiles and amphibians.

Our last floor was the upper level, where we saw the Evolving Planet exhibit, passed through the Dinosaur Hall, the plants of the World, some worldwide rocks and the Hall of Jade & Gems. But our last stop before going home was in the museum store. We bought one magnetic picture from the museum and a mug, and those items went into my collection. I try to have a magnetic picture and a mug from every special place or city that I visit.

We left the museum around 3:30 pm, and we still had four more hours to drive before reaching our home! It was an exhausting but very pleasurable day…..

Freezing……

The first thing that I remember from our third day in Chicago is the low temperature!  It was not too low, but the main problem was the wind.

We started our day with a short walk from our hotel to the Palmer Hotel at Chicago Downtown. The bus tour left that hotel around 10:30 am. The bus driver was an old man with a southern accent, who sometimes was difficult to understand for me but who was extremely kind. The tour started with showing us a big sculpture at Congress Plaza called The Bowman and the Spearman. After that, we went to the north side of the city, crossing the Magnificent Mile, made a short stop at Chicago’s Zoo and also passed near  Wrigley Field (home of Chicago Cubs), one of the most famous baseball fields in the USA.

After the north side we went to the south using the Lake Shore Drive to reach a south neighborhood when the Obama family has their house in Chicago ( as an explanation, if you don’t know, the current US President lived in Chicago before the move to the White House in Washington DC). We passed near the Museum of Science and Industry, and we stopped at Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum to take some pictures.

The final stop of the tour was at John Hancock Tower in order to visit the Observatory. The view  was beautiful because we could  see all the city of Chicago and Michigan Lake, and I can tell you that is an amazing view! We left the tower, and we walked a little more of the Magnificent Mile because it was Black Friday, and it was time for shopping !!!!!

Walking at Downtown!!

My second day in Chicago was on Thanksgiving Day. Almost everything was closed, except McDonald’s; therefore we decided to walk through Chicago's downtown.

My wife and I started our tour visiting Millennium Park. Our first picture was in front of a wall made of video screen bricks, which was showing us two faces. The name of this place is Crown Fountain. Near this place we saw an ice skating rink and from this skating rink it was possible to see the most famous sculpture at this park, the Bean!

As did a million other people who visited and will visit Millennium Park, we took some pictures in the Bean. It's really a unique sculpture to appreciate.

After that, we passed through a garden, which was looking like a dead garden because in November it is fall in the USA and all of the landscape does not look good.

We were a little disappointed with the fountain because it was without water; again the reason was the fall season. I realized that we need to come back there during the spring or the summer to fully enjoy the beautiful park.

We walked on the edge of the lake, from the fountain to the Navy Pier. It was a long and cold walk because the temperature was not too cold, but we were facing a lot of wind.

Everything at the pier was closed because of the holiday. Thus, we decided to walk again up to Michigan Avenue or the Majestic Mile. Our target was a restaurant that we could have lunch at, because it was almost 03:00 PM and we hadn’t had lunch yet.

We found an open restaurant near Michigan Avenue that was TGI Friday's, but at that time and considering the options that we had, they had the best food and the best restaurant in town!

After the lunch, we came back to our walking journey, and we passed through Michigan Avenue and came back to the hotel.

During the night, we had our Thanksgiving dinner at the famous American restaurant, MacDonald’s! (it was the only one open that night). It was less than one block from the hotel.

I'll tell more about day 3 and 4 in the next posts.....