Saturday, August 11, 2018

8.11.18 - Museum of Science & Industry

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.

In any case we finished our hot dogs and walked back to the hotel. Even though it was only 8pm or so we were both pretty tired, so we ordered junk food from the hotel restaurant (Bill’s) including a chocolate shake and cheesy fries and a burger, and then we ate that and our grocery snacks (mostly pistachios, also some cheap wine) and watched Breaking Bad. I also edited and uploaded pictures. Vacations are great for trying new things but also great for just being lazy and resting whenever we feel like it, and I quite enjoyed it. And of course we talked with the girls, our little loves.

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