adventures in chicago

yesterday timmy and i decided to take a trip into the city (we're on vacation at his parents' house in indiana right now) so we looked up which museums were free and when, and headed out.  we parked in our usual parking garage, and were sad to find that the price had been upped from $8 to $10 but parked there anyway.  we had decided to check out the art museum since that was free, but we were disappointed to find out that the list we had seen was over two years old, and the museum was, in fact, not free.  so we thought, "if we have to pay, is this really the one we want to go to?"  we decided it wasn't, but the field museum of natural history was.  however, that was across town.  but timmy knows what to do, so we bought all day public transportation passes for $5 each, this proved to be a very worthy investment.

we figured out which busses to take, and got on our way.  when the doors opened, two chinese girls tried to step on (they had been having trouble figuring out exactly where they were going, despite several people trying to help.  language barriers are rough, even with electronic translators.)  so, when the girls tried to step on, the bus driver was like, "GIRLS, GET OUT OF THE WAY!  LET THE MAN OFF THE BUS!"  the "man" was a friend of the bus driver, i think.  and he didn't seem to be in a hurry or anything, the bus driver just really wanted the girls to get out of the way...  then the girls asked, "how many stops to the aquarium?" and the bus driver said, "NO 'how many stops!' ONE STOP!"  timmy and i held our laughter in until we were in our seats.  it was a little too much to handle.  the people sitting around the girls tried to help them figure out where they needed to go.  way to go thoughtful tourists.  i know they were tourists because actual people from chicago don't really talk to strangers unless they're crazy (as i later found out when i tried to offer my seat to a couple who had been standing a while on the subway...  and timmy quickly explained that i was from arkansas...  oh well.)

the museum was sweet.  i saw the man eating lions from "The Ghost and the Darkness" and a few mummies from ancient egypt.  we also paid extra to go through a natural disaster section and that was pretty interesting.  my favorite was this five-screen panoramic video of a tornado.  some very brave storm chaser invented a pod that can stay stationary through a tornado.  it was pretty amazing footage.  we were able to see a tornado come toward us from across a field and then go directly over us and watch it disappear into the distance.

then timmy and i went to wrigleyville on a whim.  when we stepped off the train there was  a guy selling tickets to a game, and since timmy had never seen the inside of wrigley stadium (home of the chicago cubs) and we managed to get tickets from the scalper for $5 each instead of $20, we went inside.  however, we left before it even got started.  our seats were waaaay in the back of the highest tier, four rows from the total back.  but we took some pictures.

then we rode a train back to chicago and went to giordano's, my favorite place in chicago.  we were really tired and we ordered the wrong pizza, we felt really bad sending it back, but the waitress was nice and she let us re-order.  we felt silly about that though.

even with our bus/train passes, we walked a whole lot and my old lady body is super achey today.  plan one when we get back to keokuk is to get back into shape.

love.