Juliacentralicious

Chicago, Illinois: My New Favorite Place

Part One: Culture
Oh my. I adore Chicago, I really do. It's high density, so much more than LA (not like that's hard), and even more so than Portland in some ways. Chicago is like a very shiny polished Portland.
Fortunately for me, Mike's family is a member of just about everything, so I was able to finagle my share of touristy trips. Did you know that the Chicago Zoo in Lincoln Park is free? Free. We spent some time walking around there—big kitties! They have a super-impressive monkey house—lots of gorillas and chimps and such, and of course all the cute little ones. Pretty impressive African exhibit as well. They have what appears to be a reckless attitude towards displaying the animals—the lion habitat doesn't actually have a cage, just a chasm that (I assume) he can't leap between him and you. Similarly, their spiders have nothing at all, only the zoo's assurance that since both food and water are delivered to the spiders at their current webs, they would have no desire to leave. But what if they just wanted to? They could.
We also hit up the Aquarium—which is also pretty impressive. They certainly do displays right here. We even caught a bit of the dolphin show (they leap! They swim on their backs with the trainers! They spin!). They had a special exhibit on lizards (featuring a Komodo, which explained why they had transformed the entrance line outside into the gaping maw of a lizard—which, thanks to the previously-mentioned membership, we didn't have to wait in). I do have an encouraging story from there, however. They have a large reef exhibit in what is like the basement—you have to take a special elevator to go down there, and when you're done, there's a long line to ride the elevator back up, especially since people didn't seem to realize that you have to actually press the button for the elevator to come. A museum usher (attendant? What are they called?) was walking down the line, yelling at us that we did indeed have to press said button, when some people ahead of us asked about stairs (it was, like I said, a very long line). The guy replies that there are indeed stairs, but it's a few flights up. He can, however, show us the door. We immediately jump out of line with them, followed by more and more people. It was wonderful—a whole score of Americans refusing to stand in line, choosing a few flights of stairs over laziness. It may not seem like much, but sometimes it's nice to see that people aren't as hopeless as you think.
There's also, of course, the Field Museum, home to Sue the T-rex (one of the best-preserved T-Rexs there is) and many other shiny exhibits (the shiniest, of course, being the gemstone collection). Pretty neat Egyptian exhibit, and of course the history of the earth (aka stuffstuffstuffDINOSAURSstuffMASSEXTINCTIONstuffstuff). It was also the setting for an awful movie called "The Relic," which we subsequently watched.
A couple days later, Mike's mom took us to the Garfield Conservatory, which used to be the largest conservatory in the US. It's still pretty damn impressive. They have art installations there, too, though I can't say I'm a fan of the mosaic-pudgy-woman-and-other-tackiness sculptures they had (I forever regret I missed the Chihuly installation). But the fern room was awesome—it's such a nice peaceful place, I wish we had brought sandwiches or something.
I also had Mike take me to Millenium Park later that day. It's this big beautiful park (of which Chicago has many), but the most awesome part about it is the Bean. A giant (much larger than I had imagined) chrome, super-shiny kidney bean shape. When we went, there was a wedding party getting pictures taken in front of it, and a cloud of tourists around it. You can get all sorts of fun skyline views reflected in it, and when you stand directly underneath it, it's like looking at yourself at the bottom of a very small, deep hole. Pretty damned sweet. They also have these fountains—two large upright rectangles made out of glass blocks, "facing" (it's a pun, see, because they have large, and I mean LARGE moving faces of light on them) each other over a flat area. There's water falling from the tops of them, and also sometimes from where the mouths are. I'll be honest—it's a bit creepy. There's also the Gehry outdoor concert venue thing. When we were passing by, there was some bluesy sort of group playing, almost rehearsing. Pretty chill.
There were the more mundane things of Chicago, as well. Trips downtown for errands involving Mike or his sister. Riding the El (which for me was beyond mundane—it's a train! But elevated.), which has some pretty good views of the city. I'll say again that I love how dense the city is—narrow streets, tall buildings, all that. It was great.

posted by Julia @ 3:08 PM