Chi-ca-gone

Our campground is about sixty miles outside of Chicago so we left the car here for the day and took the Metra commuter train in to town (roundtrip only $5 on the weekend!) We wandered for a bit, saw some of the city.

Millennium park not incredible but nice. The big shiny bean sculpture (not actually called the Bean, but it should be) was actually really cool. Met a man on stilts who chatted with us for a bit. I asked why he was there and he told us that Mayor Daley was not happy with the lack of crowds at Millennium park so he sponsored a whole bunch of activities and crowd pleaser type things. Apparently "stilt walking juggler" is now a government job.

We then caught the number ten bus down to the Museum of Science and Industry. This place is cool. There were a couple of rooms that reminded me of the new Air and Space museum (whole planes dwarfed by the sheer size of the room). Actually this museum kind of reminded me of every science museum I have ever been to. It had some boring text heavy sciency stuff in one place, but then they had many interactive rooms and awesome ideas for exhibits. In the submarine room there were periscopes that looked outside; there was an amazing exhibit on old toy robots; and there was a model of Chicago that took up a huge amount of space. We spent about two and a half hours there and it was not enough. Not by a long shot.

We caught the ten bus back, then hopped onto the subway (I got to ride the El!). We tried to stop for dinner at about 7pm only to realize that that is when Chicago (at least where we were) shuts down on a Sunday. Even the restaurants. We found food eventually at a sports bar. Eh. Pretty American, I guess.

There were a lot of cute girls in Chicago. Props to the city. Not sure why there seemed to be so many, but we appreciated it.

On the train ride back we entertained ourselves for at least 45 minutes on math. We first spent a chunk of time figuring out what time after 9 o'clock the minute and hour hand made a perfect line, then we figured out the formula for the general solution. Then I showed Jim how to figure out the next perfect square given the one before it and number you want squared. We may be nerds, but we were definitely the most entertained people in our age group on board that train.