26 October 2009

The Rest of the Trip

I already covered the Ferris wheel, so here's a summary of the other non-food related things we did in Chicago.

Learned (sorta) to take the El. It doesn't work the same way as MTA. It's actually much simpler, but we still managed to take the wrong train a couple of times. My dad had some minor hissy fits, but it all worked out fine.

Went to Shedd Aquarium and saw a super corny show with a sea lion, belugas, dolphins, penguins, and (weirdly) some hawks. One of the hawks went AWOL and ended up sulking atop one of the trees surrounding the giant pool. Managed to be snarky to the dude talking about Alaskan otters. Those things are beyond adorable, BTW. Like fat, snub-nosed ferrets. Also saw a balance-impaired sea turtle named Nickle. Unfortunately, we went late in the day and didn't have time to cover the whole place. Oh, I almost forgot about the 4-D movie experience we had. It was mostly irritating as they squirted water in your face and poked you in the back. Good for the kiddies, I suppose.

Did a fair amount of browsing along the Magnificent Mile, walked the Navy Pier and along Lake Shore Drive. Took an architectural boat tour, in the rain, and learned that there are no private use buildings along Chicago's waterfront. Oh, and Mies van der Rohe was very fond of linear buildings. We wanted to do the Segway tour, but the weather was against us. Saturday night we went to the observation deck of the Hancock bldg and did the audio tour. And, it a brilliant bit of accidental awesomeness, we were up there when they did the fireworks at Navy Pier. It was a nice way to cap the trip off.

Chicago is a nice city. More friendly than Philly and cleaner than NYC. The streets smell like chocolate and the subway smelled like oranges - really. Very fond of revolving doors there. There's a fair amount of it that's "underground". You could be walking down the street when it would abruptly end, and you would have to seek out a stairwell and go subterranean. I definitely suggest you bring a raincoat and a hat because they aren't kidding about that Windy City thing. Also, there's no smoking within 15 feet of public buildings. Just an FYI.

Oh, and I was entirely wrong about the flight time - it's about an hour and a half. I got an aisle seat both ways, and got ass rubbed all over my arm and shoulder. People have very little sense of space. I also got whapped in the noggin by a dude waiting to deplane. He apologized, I let it go.

Heh, this has nothing to do with Chicago, but the driver who got us at the Philly airport looked a bit like a shorter Tahmoh Penikett and had a Russian accent. I wanted to bite him.

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