Chicago Trip '08

Yesterday Mike and I went to Chicago as our Valentine's Day gift to one another. We did the same thing last year and had lots of fun. Just like last year we decided to take the train from Kenosha, a city about 45 minutes south of Milwaukee. The train stops in downtown Chicago. It's pretty convenient.

Last year we walked to the Art Institute, but this year it was colder and the things we wanted to visit were farther away. Mike decided the best way to get there would be the El. I was pretty nervous because I couldn't remember if "El" stood for "electric" or "elevated," but neither option thrilled me. I'm afraid of electric trains because I'm always afraid that I'll fall off the platform somehow and get electrocuted on the third rail. I made sure to stay far away from the edge of the platform until the train was there.

The ride on the El was surprisingly short. They go pretty fast. They also have some pretty sharp turns to take, so the train seemed to tip precariously at times. Apparently "El" also stands for "elevated" because the rails were about one story off the ground, which did not make the tipping seem any safer. Luckily we made it to the museum campus safely. I was slightly irritated because the cost of a round trip on the El was $4 per person, and I felt that it was a rip-off to spend almost as much getting around Chicago as it cost to get there in the first place (a round trip on the train is $5 per person on the weekend). But spending $18 on transportation is less than we would have spent if we had driven our car and paid to park in a public lot, so I guess it's not so bad.

We walked a few blocks to the museum campus. Stairs and inclines are getting tough for me, so I was happy to have an excuse to stop and rest for a moment while I took a photo. This is part of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan. Observe the cold:

First we went to the Shedd Aquarium. Mike's parents had given us some money for our trip as a gift so I didn't feel too bad about buying a full aquarium admission. It's pricey though, especially considering that there isn't enough there to spend the entire day. I mentioned the high prices to Mike as we were getting ready to leave and said that maybe they'd lower them eventually because people were unwilling to pay such high admission fees. But then we walked out the door and saw a line of people waiting to buy tickets going from the admission counter, out the door, and down the steps. So I guess people are willing to pay. I suppose that's the difference between Chicago prices and Milwaukee prices.

The aquarium was pretty cool, though. They had lots of different exhibits including a huge coral reef exhibit.

This fuzzy shot gives you an idea of the scale of the coral reef tanks. Some tanks were bigger and some were smaller, so this one was pretty average. You can also see that the fish were able to swim overhead so you could look up and see them swimming over you.

In the oceanarium they had beluga whales and dolphins. One of the whales had had a baby recently. I had Mike take my picture with the sign because in a few months I'll have something else in common with that whale (aside from my mammalian characteristics and my ever-expanding girth).

Here's a photo of the whale in question. That gray spot in the water near her is actually the baby whale. I guess baby belugas are gray at first. They were having lots of fun playing with an inflatable soccer ball.

We ate lunch at the aquarium, looked at some more fish, and then continued our trek to the Field Museum. There wasn't a line there which I thought was odd, because the museum has free admission all this month. However, when we got inside we saw that the place was absolutely swamped, so I guess people were taking advantage of it.

By this point my feet were getting really tired and we only had about two hours before we had to leave to catch the train home. So we looked at the map to see which exhibits we absolutely had to go to. Mike wanted to see the man-eating lions of Tsavo while I wanted to see some of the other animals and the dinosaur bones. We looked at the animals, studied the lions, and cruised through the Plants of the World exhibit on the way to see the bones. Unfortunately the dinosaur bones were blocked off for some reason. We figured we'd be able to get through by going through the Our Evolving Planet exhibit, but traffic there was incredibly slow-moving. I was pretty ticked off...the bones are the best part of any museum! Why make them hard to get to? Fortunately we got to see a big t-rex skeleton in the lobby, and I found a big brontosaurus model on our way back to the El.

We considered staying in Chicago overnight and hitting the Field Museum again the next day, but today we're supposed to get a nasty winter storm and I didn't want to drive home through it (or walk through it for that matter). So we headed home. We're going to go to the Milwaukee Public Museum during my spring break in March so that'll make up for it.

We got back to the train station and got a snack to tide us over until we got home. We wanted to catch the 4:45 train back to Kenosha, but when we went to get on it was absolutely full. There's a naval base on the train line and a lot of navy people go to Chicago for the weekends. I guess they all wanted to go back at 4:45 too because the train was full of white hats and pea coats. Luckily there was another train set to leave at 5:45, so we decided to just go on that one. Mike was pretty bored while waiting.

Luckily he perked up after awhile.
We got on the next train about 25 minutes early to make sure we got seats and made it back to Milwaukee by 9 PM. I even found a parking spot on our block, which is quite a feat at 9 PM on a Saturday night.

I really had fun yesterday. Going somewhere with Mike was the best Valentine's present I could have gotten. Lately we've been cooped up in our apartment either because of bad weather or because we had to do stuff to get ready for the baby, so it was really great to just take a day to have an adventure together. We should do that more often.