mala_14 | Chicago trip

I spent the past week in Chicago and Indianapolis. I'd never been to either place and have never spent that much time in the States other than Grand Forks and Minneapolis, except a trip to New York and Boston a couple of years ago. That leaves a lot of the US to visit and learn about. Fun fact: my city, in its heyday just before WWI, used to be called the "Chicago of the North." Actual Chicago is a very different place. The most imposing thing was the skyscrapers. We stayed downtown, right by Michigan Ave., and they towered over everything. It makes for a magnificent skyline, but was a bit overwhelming for me. I really enjoyed the parks which are right along the lake. They were all green and flowering and there were tons of birds. It was chilly most of the time we were there (Chicago is aptly named "the Windy City."), but we still walked around a LOT. (One day we walked from Michigan Ave. to Wrigley Field with a stop at the Chicago History Museum. Altogether that is about 5 miles, not including the walking around in the museum time. Whew!)

We went to Navy Pier.

Saw many interesting and beautiful buildings around Chicago, like the Fourth Presbyterian Church with its lovely courtyard (my favourite thing to see during the whole trip) and this conservatory in Lincoln Park.

We saw the Cubs play and I had a Chicago-style hot dog. Delicious!

Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, and Soldier Field (as well as the Planetarium, but we didn't go there) are all in one place called Museum Campus. It's very scenic.

At the Aquarium I hung out in a Yellow Submarine and saw lots of animals: fish, sharks, belugas, penguins, a blue lobster, sea otters, turtles and a 14 ft. anaconda!

At the Field Musem, I saw Sue (the most complete T. Rex skeleton ever found), an ancient Egyptian tomb, an exhibit tracking the history of the world and evolution (of plants and animals, plus dinosaurs and extinctions!), gemstones, a Viking exhibit, and more taxidermied animals than I could ever imagine (and I've been to the Natural History Museum in New York), including these man-eating lions that the movie The Ghost and the Darkness was based on.

The following day we went to visit the boyfriend's cousin and her husband who live in Indianapolis or, more specifically, Carmel which is a town on the north part of Indy. I don't have any pictures of this part of the trip because we mostly just hung out and ate steak and drank local beers. They (and their dog Katie) had just moved into their brand new gorgeous house a couple of weeks ago. You can check out her blog here if you're interested. There are lots of house pictures and will be a post about our visit. We went to Harry and Izzy's, a steak house that is a sister restaurant of the famous steak house St. Elmo's that was opened in 1902. We also visited the associated 1933 Lounge which has an end-of-Prohibition theme. Really cool. The shrimp cocktail was insane; the horseradish in the cocktail sauce actually brought tears to my eyes at one point.

We headed back to Chicago to spend some time at Draft Town, which was sort of like a big street festival being put on for the NFL draft that Chicago was hosting. That was kind of neat, but it was much hotter than before, so it was a bit much for me. SO MANY football fans!