Summer Break - Chicago

We headed into Chicago on the train, which was a bit of an adventure for all of us.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and we headed to Millennium Park, which was finally completed in 2004 - over schedule and over budget.  It was a great place to wander around, and had lots of different spaces.  Here is a bit of a photo tour of our day here.  We started at this big shiny structure, known as the bean (as it is shaped like one - just not from this angle where Quinn and I are standing!)  It is really cool, and everyone walks around and under it, looking at their reflection, 

 and at the right angle, you can get a great photo withe the Chicago skyline in the background.  We tried, but if you look carefully at the photo below you can see Phil taking the photo, me standing there, and the boys running around like crazy people!

Next, we went past the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.  It is an outdoor concert venue, with speakers all through, and a really funky design.  The Tuesday we were there was the first outdoor event for the summer, a film showing a concert of the Rolling Stones.  We would have liked to have seen it, but it didn't start until 7.30pm, and we weren't going to be able to walk around the city all day, see the film and get home without a meltdown.  Fortunately, on Thursday was the opening night of the Blues Festival.  When we came into the city then, we planned on staying for that, which was great.

Next stop was just by the Crown Fountain.  This area had a display of art by an American/Japanese artists, who designed these big ceramic structures, then paints them.  He calls them "Dangos", meaning rounded form, or dumplings in Japanese.  They were a bit of fun, and something to look at on our way down to the Fountain.

 The fountain is bordered at the north and south ends by 50 foot tall glass towers that display images of the faces of Chicagoans, which is constantly changing.  Then every few minutes there is a water fountain which sprays out of one of their mouths, which the kids loved to run through.

 Some of the kids were paddling in the water, which was about ankle deep, but the boys decided to get right into it and run through it and get completely wet!  They were also filming something while we were there, so there was this guy in a business suit with all these camera people around, and he had to walk through the water at least 20 times, doing the same thing.  It was a nice place just to relax, in the middle of the city.

Chicago is renowned for it's architecture, and we wanted to get out on Lake Michigan, so we combined the two, and did an architecture tour which went up the river, and then out onto Lake Michigan, while describing the different buildings in the city.  We signed up for the tour, and then had a little wait - everyone was going a bit stir crazy, before we got on the boat!

 

The picture below shows some of the bridges in Chicago.  It has 18 movable (opening) bridges, in just 2 miles.  They only open about twice a year, to let boats in and out.

Some of the buildings we saw going up the river include:

The Wrigley Building, of the chewing gum empire.  Wrigley Stadium is also the name of the baseball stadium in Chicago.  Apparently, they initially made washing powder, and would attach a stick of gum on each box.  They discovered that people were buying the washing powder for the gum, and started making chewing gum, exclusively. 

Next are the corn cobs.  Apparently this architect decided that there were no straight lines in nature, so these buildings were designed with no straight lines. The lower levels have car parks and shops, with apartments up the top.

This is the Trump building, which is a skyscraper and condo hotel, built in 2001.  It was the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, until it was surpassed in 2009 by the Sears tower, in Chicago.  There are lots of other famous buildings in Chicago, including the John Hancock Tower, but these are all I have photos of!  Below is a picture of us on Lake Michigan, with the Chicago skyline in the background.

 We had to have a rest day on Wednesday, and just swam and hung out at the caravan park.  On Thursday, we went into Chicago again.  We went to the Museum of Science and Industry, which was great fun.  We all had a really good day - we were there for most of the day, and still didn't see everything.  They had a special exhibition of an old working coalmine from Illinois, which the boys really enjoyed.  We went down in the original lift, and got on the train to see coal mining equipment.  Got a picture of this long wall miner for my dad :)

There were lots of other exhibits which fascinated the boys including submarines, the weather area where they simulated a tornado, a plane simulator which we took a ride in, and the human body area where they ran on a giant treadmill, like a mouse!  After the day there, we walked down to the shores of Lake Michigan, which is their beach. It is much nicer than I expected, given that it is a Lake - albeit, a very big one...  It was a cool windy day, but still a nice spot for a photo.