Chicago

Darby and I had a great trip to Chicago with his parents a couple of weeks ago. I really like the city (at least the downtown area). It's very clean and pretty, and the views of Lake Michigan are amazing. It might have taken Seattle's place as my favorite big city.


View of the skyline and Lake Michigan

We got passes to go to five different attractions: the aquarium, the planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Hancock Observatory. All were definitely worth it. The aquarium was probably my favorite. It was HUGE and had all sorts of cool fish! Plus, there was a dolphin show in this beautiful amphitheatre with a view of Lake Michigan, which was awesome.

We did all that stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday with Darby's parents. We also ate really good pizza at Pizzeria Uno, one of the cities' oldest pizza places. It was so nice of Darby's parents to take us and pay for everything! We were planning on going to Chicago anyway, but we definitely wouldn't have gotten to do as much if we were footing the bill! We had a great time with them, and they were troopers about me and Darby dragging them all over the city looking for restaurants we had read about in our guidebook. We all definitely got our walking in!

On Thursday, Darby's parents headed out for Wisconsin and Darby and I went back into the city for a little more sightseeing. We went to Millenium Park, which has tons of cool statues. One of them is called "Cloud Gate" and is basically a giant bean-shaped mirror that you can see yourself in:

Darby and I are the big dorks taking a picture of ourselves in the center.


Then we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. Wow! That place was HUGE!! There were tons of paintings from all different eras. Probably the most famous one they have is "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." It was cool to get to see it up close. After we had about as much art as we could take, Darby and I headed to lunch at Heaven on Seven, which is a Cajun restaurant. It tasted authentic to me! After that, we got on the train back to Elmhurst (where we were staying) and drove back to Urbana. It was a great break from doing nothing and we're excited to go back and explore more.