Saturday we were feeling really, really ambitious. We were going to hit the Aquarium, The Planetarium, and the Natural History Museum all in one day starting at 9 in the morning and ending by 5 when they all closed. It was a good thing they were all really close together.
We started at the Aquarium and it was a good thing we did because when we left there was a huge line waiting to get in. It was a nice little experience but our passes only got us into certain parts of the Aquarium. That was one downfall of the Go Pass. We were able to hit a lot of different areas though. We walked through halls that were labeled different rivers, lakes, and seas that contained cool fish from all over the world. Some of the fish were really scary looking with huge teeth, some of the fish were amazingly colorful.
We saw some otters in one exhibit and as one swam by I am pretty sure he waved and smiled at me. I am not even kidding. We saw a Beluga whale and penguins. Penguins are awesome. They are so cute and fast swimmers. One of the main attractions was a hall full of different types of jelly fish. They are cool things, but scary. Some come in really crazy shapes and sizes. We didn't stay too long in the aquarium but we saw all that our passes allowed us to.
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| The friendly otter |
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| Jellies everywhere. I wanted to touch them so bad |
After the Aquarium we decided we should finally try a Chicago Dog. I cheated and got ketchup on mine. What is a hot dog without ketchup? Travis and Vanessa gave me such a hard time. I may have also let the tomatoes fall off and not put them back on. Oh well. I guess I am a picky eater. They were really good though. I would like to recreate them but I am having a hard time finding sport peppers and the poppy seed buns.
We walked down the way to the Planetarium which was closed the day before. We learned upon arrival we also were only allowed into certain parts of the Planetarium which was okay because we got our fill of space while we were there. We were able to watch a movie on Space Junk, that was crazy to think about. We were also able to look into some huge, powerful telescopes. We saw some things on the sun called prominence's, which is... a large, bright, gaseous feature extending outward from the Sun'
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| Wow the Sun! |
The Natural History Museum was AWESOME! I could have spend all day in there had I taken more snacks and been able to ride around for a little bit. My feet kept getting tired even though I was wearing good shoes. Apparently, I need to practice standing for long periods of time? When we walked in while
waiting at the ticket counter I looked behind me at a huge staircase and
thought wow this place would be a great location for a wedding. We started out
by going into a huge exhibit on ancient Egypt. It was like a maze.
We wound through areas that had mummies and artifacts from different
tombs. We saw how they built pyramids. It was very educational and
I wish I read faster because I didn't have time to read all of the signs.
Once we made it out of Ancient Egypt we headed into an exhibit that was
about bugs and soil. It was like I went back to school to my soil
classes. It was a cool exhibit but short.
We
decided to head into the animal exhibit. This exhibit was awesome.
They had all kinds of stuffed animals from all over the world. They
even had the skulls for the lions that killed a lot of people in Africa, that
the movie Ghost in the Darkness is based on. It was interesting to read
about them and see if Hollywood did them justice or not. The Animal
exhibit was huge and took awhile to get out of. Every exhibit was maze
like to fit the most in a small space.
Once
out of the "zoo" we headed over to the Native American Exhibit.
This exhibit was AWESOME! I am very interested in the Native Americans
and their life pre-European. They had displays for each region and time
period. The exhibit was massive. I think we spent 2 hours trying to
get out of the exhibit. Unfortunately, it was also in this exhibit we
realized that Chicago dog didn't last very long in our bellies. It was so
amazing to see the innovations of each civilization and how they adapted to
live in their region and time period. They had a whole hut of a Pawnee
Indian tribe. I thought all plains Indians had tepees. I was wrong.
The hut was huge. We walked through a whole gallery of ceremonial dress
also. The work it would have taken to make the different dress for men
and women was remarkable.
We
finally made it out of the Native American exhibit and headed up to the exhibit
hall of Jewels. It was awesome. Not quite what I was expecting. I
couldn't imagine wearing jewelry that was worth more than all the cars I have
own combined. The jewels were breath taking though. I should have taken
more pictures. We were starting to get tired by this point though.
Hence the lack of pictures.
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| Be afraid be very afraid, Laraine is going to keep us in here for hours and hours |
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| The Lions Skulls from Ghost in the Darkness. Nobody knows how big the lions actually were because their skins had been used to for rugs and deteriorated throughout the years. |
The
last exhibit we hit up was the Traveling the Pacific exhibit, so Travis could
connect with his roots. I wish we would have been able to spend more time
in this exhibit but we were all pretty tired and it was about closing time.
We got to see some pretty cool stuff but we didn't get to spend much time
at each display, therefore, I didn't get to read very much and it made me a
little grumpy. I did however, used to work at the Polynesian Culture
Center and it felt similar in there.
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| Maori House |
I
was right about the place being an awesome place for a wedding. As we
were leaving the crew was setting up for a wedding party.
As
we were leaving we noticed everybody and their dog heading over to Soldier
Field for the big game between Washington and Illinois. We were bummed we
didn't think to get tickets. We tried to get Bears tickets but they were
way too expensive. We settled instead to go to a sports bar and watch 10
games at once and gorge ourselves because we were starving!
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