I don’t think we stopped anywhere for breakfast because we knew we’d
get lunch first thing before going to the Museum. I may have had some of our
Jewel Osco raisin bread with pineapple cream cheese to hold me over. I can’t
remember. Or perhaps we finished the Malnati’s leftover from the night before. Or
both. I still brought my purse but Jack brought one of the free drawstring bags
we got from the Big Bus tour, and he carried my water bottle which made quite a
difference.
We walked to Millennium Park but couldn’t find the El station I
thought was supposed to be there. Instead it was a couple blocks away. It took
us a minute to figure out how to buy tickets and then which line we needed to
take, but we got it and then waited on the platform as different trains went
by. It was really enjoyable riding the El down toward MSI. The entire route was
elevated and we got to watch the city go by. I particularly like some of the
residential areas with little gardens on their balconies. Looks cozy.
After a while I could see a few blocks from the train tracks what
looked like a large parade or festival, and it seemed to go on for blocks. We
weren’t sure what it was, but when we finally got to our station it dropped us
right in the middle of it. Furthermore I thought our station was going to be a
7 minute walk from the Museum. Turns out it was a 39 minute walk. I had looked
at Google Maps incorrectly and mistook the Metra route for the El route. I was
pretty irritated about that, but was soon distracted from my irritation by the
fact that Jack and I found ourselves walking through this massive and
exclusively black festival. There were a lot of men dressed in purple robes
that were from some kind of church. There were a lot of people with bullhorns
or microphones, including one talking about how the white man thinks he is god.
There were food carts and live music. It was impressive and surreal. No one
seemed to take notice of us even though we were blindingly pale compared to
everyone else there. I actually felt slightly bad for being there because I know
what it’s like to want to have your own space to talk about a given issue in a
solidarity way rather than a debate way. But it didn’t seem to be a big deal.
We walked a few blocks (I think, it’s really a huge park so it’s
hard to measure) and found the end of the parade/festival, and moved on to walk
through the University of Chicago. We talked about race relations and also how
we were glad to not be in school anymore. Even though I hadn’t wanted to have
to walk that far it was a nice walk through peaceful neighborhoods that
reminded both of us a little bit of Berkeley. We also walked under a Metra
station (a different train line) and realized that was the line I had
mistakenly thought we were taking when we were really taking the El. Oh well.
Shortly after that we found Snail Thai cuisine, a hole-in-the-wall
type place that got good ratings on Yelp and was near the museum. It was very
pleasant. We sat by a window that had a stained glass panel in it. The
restaurant was quiet and peaceful and the food was good and there was a lot of
it. I got some kind of pineapple shrimp curry and Jack got pad see ew but with
chicken. Oh and crab Rangoon, of course. It was more than our fill.
We walked it off by heading back to the Museum of Science &
Industry (MSI), which is massive. It was a little confusing to get in—you had
to go down two floors underground, get tickets, and then go back up to the main
entrance. It was also confusing because sometimes they have separate lines for
City Pass holders but today they did not. It was one of the few lines of the
entire trip that we had to wait in, but we weren’t in a hurry. When it was our
turn the lady explained our City Pass included one free 3D movie and a free ride on one of the flight
simulators. We both excitedly exclaimed “ohhhh!” when she said that and it made
her laugh.
Entering the museum is pretty impressive. There is a huge dome
with lights that change colors, and it opens into four or five different
sections of the museum. From the center of the domed area you can see trains,
airplanes, a tornado of some type, and entrances to exhibits about genetics and
energy and coal mining and all sorts of things. We went to the train section
first and painted across the ceiling were the names of dozens of famous
scientists. I recognized maybe half of them. It was pretty cool.
We went upstairs and checked out the timeline of aircraft
innovation before going on the flight simulator, which took us up into space
and through a tornado. (There was no line and we got to ride the simulator just
the two of us, which was nice.) We walked through the Doomsday Clock section,
which was primarily a historical record of the scientists who thought of and
created the atom bomb and their subsequent pleas with the government not to use
it. I didn’t know Einstein had been involved in suggesting it, nor did I know
that most of the scientists working on it did so largely because they feared
another country would develop it first, but once Germany and Italy surrendered
they didn’t want to mess with it anymore. Weirdly the Doomsday Clock section
was supposed to also be about climate change but I wasn’t clear on how that was
related and frankly not that interested in finding out. Overall it was a very
interesting exhibit though.
Next we went to the “You!” exhibit, which was about the different
body systems and had cut outs of actual cadavers donated to the museum decades
ago. That always weirds me out a bit. There was also a section on prenatal
development. It was in a darkened room with just the embryos and fetuses
backlit along a curved wall that showed their growth. I originally thought they
were just models and realized later that they were actual embryos and fetuses
donated also a long time ago. Even before I knew that, though, I found myself
getting depressed and angry going through the exhibit, because the humanity of
these tiny humans is so blatantly obvious when you’re staring right at them,
yet I’m drawn into a neverending willfully ignorant debate on the topic by
people who would believe otherwise. I tried not to get to wrapped up about it
but it was still upsetting.
We moved on from there to the science storms section, or at least
the top half of it. There were places to cause ripples in water and observe
refraction. There were display cases of very old instruments for measuring
electricity and curvature of the earth and other natural factors that it’s
amazing people back then figured out. There was an interactive display to
figure out what fuel sources and ignition would work to power a car versus a
rocket. Lots of good stuff, but soon we had to move on because our free movie
(underwater adventure) was going to start soon and we wanted to get ice cream
before that.
We stopped by Finnigan’s ice cream parlor which is in a section of
the museum designed to look like an old timey town. We wolfed a turtle sundae
(delicious) with just enough time to get to the movie theater. We walked pretty
quickly to several other sections to find the theater, which was kind of tucked
out of the way. It was a dome theater and we got pretty good seats about
halfway up. We learned about a fish who would smash shells against a particular
piece of coral to get them to break open so he could eat whatever was inside.
In other words it was a fish using a tool. That was pretty cool. I got a bit
sleepy in the middle and missed a lot of it (even though it was only about 20
minutes) but Jack seemed to enjoy it.
When we exited the theater we were in the middle of the space
section, so we checked out the actual remains of one of the Apollo missions as
well as info on how they originally landed on the moon and then made it back to
their ship and lots of info on how they developed rockets to ultimately allow
humans in space. It was all interesting and combined with the telescopes and
other old instruments was inspiring and sort of humbling, just thinking about
how many intelligent, curious, and motivated people have gone before us.
Leaving the space section we came across the U-boat exhibit, which
may have been the most interesting one to me. It has all this info about how
U-boats were wreaking havoc on Allied cargo ships and the different methods the
Allies developed to try to stop them. At one point I was thinking that WWII
seems like such an intense and fantastical time that we hear about so much even
today it’s hard to believe it’s a historical event and not a legend or
folklore. The world sounds so different than then now.
Finally, after all that, we made it back to the train section so
we could see the model trains going around a miniature Chicago. It was well
done, and even had lighting change to mimic night time. Reminded me of Grandpa;
I bet he would’ve liked it a lot.
We went back to Science Storms and checked out the homemade
tornado, some interactive exhibits for creating tidal waves and avalanches, and
a massively huge pendulum that took forever to knock over one of the pegs circling
it—but when it finally happened everyone cheered, haha. By the time we finished
all that we were getting pretty tired. We very quickly skimmed through the Circus,
Eye Spy, and Fairy Tale castle sections and then decided to head out.
We didn’t want to walk 39 minutes back to the El so we took the
Metra downtown instead. We sat on the upper level of one of the cars and
watched the city out the tinted windows. Reminded me a little of Source Code.
We deboarded at the last station on the line, but somehow we took a wrong turn
and ended up in a parking garage or loading dock area or something that was
underneath the main roads and sidewalks. We couldn’t see how to get to street
level. We found a stairway that seemed to go into a shopping center, so we took
it up, but the whole place was closed and eerily quiet. When we got to ground
level we could see people walking by outside but there was not a soul in the
building and the revolving door was locked. So we opened the door to its side—and
an alarm went off! We hadn’t seen any warnings for an alarmed door. We just
high tailed it out of there and crossed the street back to Millennium Park, but
what a strange little adventure. I think the door from the underground loading
dock to the shopping center was supposed to be locked and someone forgot, I don’t
know.
Anyway we meandered back over to The Bean and got some more
Chicago-style hot dogs (no ketchup!!) for dinner. We leaned against a rail and
people-watched. There was a woman there who kept reprimanding people to not sit
on the railing (which had about a one story drop on its opposite side). She
sounded very official and everyone acquiesced to her, but Jack and I thought it
was strange because she didn’t look like any kind of city official. She was
dressed like everyone else. She looked like a random citizen or tourist.
No comments:
Post a Comment