Chicago Day 2

Day 2 turned out to be a rainy, dreary sort of day.  We made our way into the city on the subway, then ran in the rain to catch a bus so we wouldn't have to walk so far outside.  We rode that bus to the museum campus and started our day at the Field Museum of Natural History.  This was such a fun museum, with tons of displays from the most complete T-Rex skeleton in the world, to a mummy's tomb, to a man-eating lion (dead and stuffed of course).  We could've spent much longer there, but we made our way through in a couple of hours so we could make our way over to the planetarium.  There we saw a typical planetarium show where they project stars onto a big dome roof.  We walked through displays on the solar system, the moon walk, and astronomy tools through history.  Finally, we went on over to the aquarium, which is in the same area as the Field Museum and planetarium.  The big oceanarium where they have the dolphins and stuff was closed for renovations, but we were still able to walk through the rest of it and see awesome sea horses, scary sharks, cute turtles, and a bunch of other sea creatures.

For the evening, we had a architecture tour on the river scheduled, but we didn't think it was going to happen since it had been raining all day and our frequent checks of the internet weather site were saying there was a 70% chance of rain throughout the evening.  Still, when we left the aquarium, the rain had stopped, so we made our way up to the pier in hopes that it might still work out.  We got onto the tour boat with about 4 other people and the boat set off, but we ended up going right back to shore.  It turns out a big school group was booked on that tour and they were running a little behind.  They finally made it, and we set off again.  Z and I were feeling somewhat peeved.  We left on the tour about 15 minutes late, and we were surrounded by a bunch of pre-teen/teenage kids- not always the best audience on a tour.  But we ended up pleasantly surprised.  The kids stayed quiet, the tour was excellent, and there was not more than a few drops of rain for the duration of the tour.  This might have been my favorite part of the trip.  I forgot to mention that between when we picked up our tour tickets and when the tour actually left, we decided to fill up a few minutes by riding the ferris wheel at navy pier.  We thought it'd be tons of fun.  Well, it wasn't really raining anymore, but the wind was still blowing quite a bit, and I was terrified.  We were clear up in the air and our car was blowing like crazy and I really thought I was going to die.  All I wanted to do was get back off. Luckily, we made it back to solid ground a little rattled but alive.  Phew.  So after our architecture tour we made our way back to the hotel again and day 2 came to a close.

I am still too lazy to post pictures so days 3 and 4 and pictures to follow.